Professional animation and special effects creations typically use render farms.
Rendering computer graphics is an integral part of finalizing high-resolution live action and animation videos for film and TV work, 3D models in architectural projects and even 3D scans and other visual materials used in the medical field. Because rendering time for a few seconds of effects-heavy high-definition (HD) video would already require a few hours to finish, setting up a render farm is an ideal investment for faster production work flow. This system is made of a computer cluster dedicated to rendering videos.
Instructions
1. List the basic technical requirements you need for each computer for your render farm. A render farm can be a dedicated system made of a few computers, a whole room filled with computers or even more than that. For a basic rendering computer to be used on a render farm, use a high-end computer system with at least a quad-core processor. If you have a larger a budget, you can use an Intel 6-core.
Use a 6GB RAM for a quad-core CPU, 12GB RAM for a 6-core or a dual Xeon or a 24GB RAM for dual or quad 6-core Xeons. Xeon is a brand of microprocessor from Intel, which is typically used for nonconsumer servers, work stations and render farms. Use a high-end video card meant for computer graphics as well. Some of the popularly recommended video cards are those under the Nvidia or ATI brands.
2. Choose a power supply system that can match the specifications of each computer, especially your selected motherboard, CPU and graphic card. Usually, you need about 600 to 1,000 watts for a computer system.
3. Select the hard drives that can match the RAID connectors of the computer's motherboard and its optical disc drive, which can either be a DVD-R or Blu-Ray-R drive. SATA drives with speed of at least 7,200 RPM are ideal for this type of system. Complete the list of all the other basic technical specifications that would comprise a powerhouse computer system meant for rendering computer graphics.
4. Finalize your technical requirements and the number of computers you will use for your render farm. This will depend on your rendering needs and the budget you have. Building a small render farm would already cost thousands of dollars. To know the exact cost, request price quotes for these requirements from computer stores, preferably those that are major sellers of professional computer and video equipment.
5. Purchase all the technical equipment you need for the render farm. Select one central server machine in your render farm setup that can distribute the workload to each clustered computer.
6. Lay out how your render farm's equipment would be set up in your preferred render farm location. For a basic setup, this is usually a room dedicated for the rendering process. For large setups with dozens of computers, this can be a couple of rooms or even an entire building. You can either come up with a render farm that serves as an addition to a work station or it can serve as a stand-alone rendering powerhouse system.
7. Connect all the render farm computers and hard drives in their dedicated room and make sure that the area has enough electricity and cooling sources to avoid system breakdown. With a series of computer systems placed in a tight space, this will generate much heat and you should ensure that you can regulate the room's temperature accordingly.
Tags: render farm, your render, your render farm, computer graphics, computer system