Different types of render farm – which is the best for your 3D animation?

We have discussed many times why a render farm is needed for your 3D animation. It saves your time, frees up your computer from hard work, and so on. Now, come to the decision-making step, when you have to choose the most suitable render farm for your projects. This post, “Different types of render farm – which is the best for your 3D animation?” will dive in and tell you what to consider when you are surrounded by many options.

Overview of 3D animation render farm

A 3D animation render farm is a collection of powerful computers (render nodes) that work together to render 3D works. Online render farms or cloud render farms are provided by service companies, with the amount of computers from hundreds to thousands to offload rendering tasks 10 or 1000 times faster.

A 3D animation render farm could support offline rendering or real-time rendering, depending on the model they pursue.

Different types of 3D animation render farm

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) render farm

This model is a traditional render farm model where artists upload their scene, set parameters, and the farm handles everything. It’s very simple, and the workflow is easy to use and streamlined.

The trade-off is limited control, and you are not able to know what’s wrong with the scene until it is finished. Their supported software and plugins could be a limitation if you don’t use popular ones.

IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) render farm

This model is a newer render farm model that offers full control over remote servers. Artists can install any software as they wish and make real-time scene adjustments. It’s like renting a powerful remote computer over the internet.

It’s a great choice if you want to know what is wrong with the scene real-time. You are able to modify and edit the projects in response to client’s requests. This model also supports uncommon software and plugins.

However, it might not be easy to start, as you need to install software or even transfer your whole pipeline onto their remote computers. One more unattractive thing is that they don’t usually provide software licenses.

PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) render farm

This model is an upgraded version of IaaS. It offers you remote computers with pre-installed software and licenses. Therefore, you have control over the project real-time, and still don’t need to spend time installing your software and transferring your licenses.

As great as it is, PaaS still cannot cover all the software in the industry. Normally, they will have common 3D applications only, you still need to prepare for installation and licenses for uncommon apps.

Choosing the best render farm for your 3D animation

Choosing the best render farm that is suitable for your 3D animation is not easy, because it depends on many aspects.

Your budget

The render farms usually don’t differ much in terms of actual cost. However, you still need to consider some of the extra costs it might have.

SaaS render farms have priority cost, which means you pay more so that they prioritize your project to render first and render faster with more nodes. For example, GarageFarm prices you $0.0025/ OBh for low priority (10 nodes), $0.0038/ OBh for medium (25 nodes), and $0.005/ OBh for high (50 nodes).

IaaS render farms require you to transfer your own license to their instances. If you don’t want to do so, you need to buy extra licenses. The license price depends on your software.

PaaS render farm is similar to IaaS – but doesn’t require a license, seems to be the best choice. However, it cannot have all the 3D software or plugins, just some popular ones like SaaS. If you are using uncommon software or plugins, you still need to buy licenses for them.

Your workflow

A general and shortened workflow for a 3D animation will consist of 3 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.

Many 3d animators, studios will do all three phases, or at least the modeling, layout, and animation phases, on their PC, 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:

Best Render Farm 2025: Reflecting on 2024 and What’s Next?

Top 5 best render farms for GPU & CPU

Best GPU render farms

If you are a person who wants to do all 3 stages on a farm, we recommend an IaaS or PaaS platform, which you can take a look at in 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.

Their supported software and plugins

This is very important. It decides if you can use that render farm or not. You can check with their staff if they support your software and plugin, and if they support your version. SaaS render farm will support popular software and plugins, while IaaS and PaaS can support all of the available ones in the industry.

Final words

Choosing a 3D animation render farm is not as easy as you imagine, but not difficult if you know what to consider. Different farms have different advantages and disadvantages, and it would be best if it suits what you need.