What to consider when you find a Blender GPU render farm?
Blender – one of the most popular 3D software programs for artists and hobbyists. It’s fast, versatile, and it’s free. It’s also the software that is supported by many render farms. However, how to find a suitable render farm for your project? In today’s post, we will dive into what to consider when you find a Blender GPU render farm.
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What to consider when choosing a Blender GPU render farm?
When choosing a Blender GPU render farm, you should take into account some criteria.
- Do they support GPU rendering or not? This is not something you need to worry about as Blender GPU is popular and almost all render farms support it. Still, you have to check it carefully just in case.
- The price rate could be the most important one, as we always need to consider if it meets our budget or not.
- The support of customer service or technical service if we encounter any problems when using the farm.
- The plugins/addons they support also need to be considered.
- The scale of your project: is it big or small?
We would like to tell you some examples of us using render farms throughout our trying. We will give you suggestions on how we think the render farm is the best in terms of one criterion for your Blender GPU projects.
Do they support GPU rendering or not?
It’s not hard to find a GPU render farm for Blender. All top 5 render farms we have introduced on VFXrendering support Blender GPU.
We have discussed which render farm is the best for GPU rendering in another article (Best GPU render farms). We also selected Fox and Rebus to be the best when it comes to GPU rendering – SaaS platform due to its popularity with many 3D artists and studios. In terms of the IaaS platform, we selected iRender as it can provide you with the powerful GPU, which is RTX4090.
Price rates – cheapest render farm
At the time of writing, based on what it shows on their price rates, Garage could be the lowest in GPU rendering in terms of SaaS farm. iRender is an IaaS farm, and they don’t calculate price based on Octanebench per hour or GHz per hour. They will calculate the time you connect to their instances. They usually have price rates like $ xx per node per hour or $ xx per day/week/month. So this is hard to tell which one is the cheapest.
It’s better to try a real project and compare the cost. We have done that in our article Render farm cost per frame: comparing 5 render farms. We tried with a Blender still image 4K. Fox is the cheapest, while Rebus is out of the budget. However, only iRender can produce the resulting image correctly. This is what you should keep in mind, as price is not really the only criterion when hiring a render farm.
Render farm with the best support
You should find a render farm with good support that can really help you get to know how to use their farm, and maybe can help you troubleshoot when the render is turning out wrong.
The refund policy is also a thing to keep in mind. It should be fast and easy when you claim. You should check their refund policy before making a decision. If one farm can support you and refund you in a pleasant and professional way after you report and explain the issue to them, we think you can consider using that farm. Nothing is more frightening than you throwing the money on their farm to render, but they cannot provide you a result and cannot refund you.
Do you think about the availability of their support? When you have a question, can they reply to you immediately? Is the support AI or a real person? Are they enthusiastic to solve the problem? From our experience, Fox Render Farm and iRender farm are the best when it comes to fast, nice, and friendly support. They are quick to respond and eager to support you with your issues.
One more farm we really like is Ranch Computing, as they are really good at helping you troubleshoot technical issues.
Support for Plugins/Addons for your Blender GPU projects
Blender doesn’t just have Eevee or Cycles as the render engine. Octane also is a choice of many 3D artists and studios. Redshift and V-Ray are not popular for Blender, but they are a choice.
Not only the render engine, but also your plugins and addons are important. It’s best to take advice from the SaaS render farm staff to know if they have them supported. For IaaS, you will need to install the plugins and add your own license, so remember to prepare for it.
The scale of your project
What determines the scale of your project? A big project can contain many tools/programs, have a large number of frames, or its size is big. Whereas a small or medium project will have fewer frames, or a smaller size, and fewer tools related.
A big Blender project will need time to upload, and it’s best for a farm to have a stable and fast upload/download speed. You don’t want to sit there wasting your time for the transferring stage right?
From what we have tried among many render farms, iRender could be a great choice for big projects, because of its transferring speed and storage allow. It’s not lightning fast, but it’s stable and has a good enough speed, and the storage for you is abundant. Plus, they allow you to rent a remote server(s), as they are IaaS, and you can easily install any software or render engines you need.
On the other hand, there are small or medium projects. If you use a render farm for them, Ranch computing could be the best one. They support common tools/programs, with a reasonable price and fast transfer. If the project is bigger than 50GB, you have to contact them first.
Other farms all have their disadvantages in data transferring, storage space, tools supported, etc. You should know your project scale to have the best choice.
Wrap up
Finding a Blender GPU render farm is not hard, but finding one suitable for your needs is. We have listed some criteria you should pay attention to when choosing a farm; it applies not only to Blender but also to other 3D applications. Hope it helps you narrow down the choice for your upcoming projects.
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