I think I understand the purpose of render farms, that is divideing the rendering process up between multiple computers. What I want to know is what you out there recommend for setting one up? And do I render parts of it separately and chain it all together afterwards or what?

most high end rendering packages have net-render
capabilities..
all you''d do then is hook up your high-end machines
on a network and let the fun begin..
what are some optimal specs for a render machine?
Dual processor is a must (AthlonMP, DualP4s, ect)
TONS of ram. you''d want at least a gig of the fastest
ram your board will handle..
and a good video card..
I recommend the FireGL cards for this purpose, but
im sure there have been newer and better cards
since my rendering hayday..

-eldee
;another space monkey;
[ Forced Evolution Studios ]

Hmmm... going out on a limb here: Why does a box thats a part of a rendering farm need a good video card? Or rather - does it really need a video card at all? I thought the hardware acceleration on the cards was used only during modelling.

Render farms distribute frames among the connected computers so that each computer handles separate frames.

Does each box in the render farm have to have the software installed on it or does one machine simply use the processing power of all the other machines? Btw thx for the answers so far. I''m planning to build a new gfx machine and was trying to decide what specs I should be shooting for.

they need a clientsoftware..
it works about the same as gaming in a network

"take a look around" - limp bizkit
www.google.com

quote:

---

Original post by Arild Fines
Hmmm... going out on a limb here: Why does a box thats a part of a rendering farm need a good video card? Or rather - does it really need a video card at all? I thought the hardware acceleration on the cards was used only during modelling.

---

Video card is used only for modelling, for this, in a render farm, you can play using only a 1 megs graphics card!. (even more, you don''t need to have monitor in the client pc. Even more, you don''t need a big harddisk.






-----------------------------------------------

"Cuando se es peon, la unica salida es la revolución"

Cool thx for the help with this. One more question...Is it better to use several lower end systems or a couple of better systems that add up to the same?

Depends if you''re more CPU-bound or I/O bound.

---

Helpful links:
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way | Google can help with your question | Search MSDN for help with standard C or Windows functions

Thanks, eng3d.