Choose a render farm for your 3D animation

3D animation now is everywhere in our lives. It’s used in many creations like video games, films, TV shows, advertisements, etc. Because of its growing popularity, the industry needs to work and produce 3D products faster. Of course it depends mostly on the skills of a 3D animator, but does a render farm contribute to it? VFXrendering will help you choose a render farm for your 3D animation in this thread.

What is 3D animation

3D animation is the process of generating objects in 3D space and making them move in a digital context. You can generate those objects by software designed specifically for 3D animation. 

To create a complete animation, you will need to do 3 general phases: modeling, layout and animation, and rendering. Each of these phases will need the power of your hardware. Normally, 3D animators will do the modeling, layout and animation on their PC, and render on a render farm. 

See the GPU application in 3D pipeline

However, sometimes you can do a whole animation on a render farm, not just the rendering phase. Now we will discover which render farm is suitable for your 3D animation.

Choose a render farm for your 3D animation

We all know render farms can help you with your rendering. They have their hardware suitable to process multiple rendering tasks, they have software, renderers and plugins supported for you to know if you can render your project on their farm. 

Today, let’s see if a render farm can help you with the modeling, layout and animation phases.

Modeling

Modeling is the process you generate your objects or characters, using modeling tools or 3D scanning tools. Modeling with software is often done on a 3D animator PC, because it’s not a GPU-intensive task, but more like a CPU-intensive one. However, when you apply color and pattern to your objects – or texture your objects, you will need a powerful GPU to display all of that.

If you model your objects with a scanning tool, it would be faster but you still need software to import, process and manage scan data. And this software will require a GPU. For example FARO SCENE is  a software like that and it requires at least a GPU with 4GB VRAM. 

Layout and animation

Once you complete your models, it’s time to continue to work with the layout and animation phase. It’s when you position and animate your models into a particular scene. You will create a set and add objects, characters, vehicles, props into it as a layout.  Then, all the models within the scene must be animated by assigning animation variables. This stage is also a CPU-intensive task, but we still need a GPU to access newer technology like lighting effect ray tracing. 

We all know CPU is an easier-to-buy component, while GPU is difficult to grab. And where could you use not one, but many powerful GPUs? Render farm. 

However, these stages like modeling, layout and animation are all real-time activities. We know that SaaS render farms cannot do that (they can only do the rendering phase), but only an IaaS can. 

To know more how an IaaS render farm can do, you can see this article (Best SaaS and IaaS render farm 2022), or just keep in mind that IaaS farm grants you & your studio control of the machine, and your studio will freely manage operating systems, databases, and applications. 

What is the best render farm for your 3d animation?

It depends. Because in real life you can do all three phases on your PC, or at least the modeling, layout and animation phases. Many 3d animators, studios do that, and they only render using a farm. So if this is your case, you will come back to find the best rendering farm. We have released some articles about GPU and CPU render farms, you can check them out for further details:

Top 5 best render farms for GPU & CPU

Best GPU render farms

If you are a person who want to process all 3 stages on a farm, we recommend you an IaaS platform, which you can take a look at this article:

Best SaaS and IaaS render farm 2022

You can even do the modeling, layout and animation on a farm, then render with another farm. It’s up to you: which pipeline is the most comfortable, which farm has the most reasonable price, or which farm can process your work the fastest, etc.

Final words

We think that it’s hard to suggest to you a suitable render farm for your animation. It will be different case by case.

You should take Garage farm if you wanna render by GPU with the best price. Or Rebus is the choice for CPU rendering as it’s powerful and cheap.

You should consider iRender or Xesktop if you don’t want just to render, but more than that. 

We hope this article helps you choose a render farm for your 3D animation. If there’s anything you want to comment or contribute, don’t hesitate to let us know.

See more:

1. Top 4 Best Online Render Farms for OctaneRender
2. Top 5 Best Render Farms For GPU & CPU