Quote:
Originally Posted by galewind
do you have to utilize your licenses on the machines used in the render farm though? I was always afraid to try to use our precious licenses on lab machines if I had students who wanted to work at home.
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I believe you only need one licence on the control machine and the rest are just render nodes which you can install on as many computers as you want.
The main thing is you need enough RAM to load the scenes (256MB that one of you mentioned will be a hair losing proposition). The processing may be slow but if you spread it on multple machines it is worth it.
Our Team had a beautiful computer lab a few yrs ago, then the computers got old so all the students on the animation team brought in ther comps and setup their own network. The only time we needed the render farm was for the finals. (You can always use the 30day trial for the control machine in the LAB if all your MAX licenses are used up on other computers.)
Ofcourse the LAB isnt allowed to use the software outside of the team use!!! So read the usage rules on FIRSTPLACE.
MY ADVICE- Do some test renders along the way and make notes of render times- You want to test different areas of the scene because some may require more rendering time than others. Then take an average and multiply by the number of frames in your animation (30fps x 30sec- 900frames => if you do any layering or compositing you may require more rendering frames depending on the effects and complexity) so the Point is figureout how much time it takes to render and make sure you can do in the the alotted time. IF you dont have a lab or render farm- you may need to ask other to borrow their computers and setup your own.
EXAMPLE- If you have 900 Frames: if you have images and effects and such and you figure out that you average 5min a frame (hopefully you're closer to 1-2 min but its very possible to but much higher) 5(min/frm) x 900(frms) = 4500(min)/60(min/hr) = 75(hrs) / 24(hrs/Day) = 3Day(+)
If you have 3 computers at the same basic speed- your down to 1 Day (25hrs). If you have 10 Computers, your done in 7.5 hrs.
SO if you can use or create a render farm- its worth its weight in gold- less stress (once its up and running!!!) and more time to work the animation itself.
Good Luck All!