Render Farms exist to give small design studios and 3D artists an edge when it comes to producing high-resolution, professional-grade 3D visualizations.
In fact, photorealistic rendering of high quality images or animations on a traditional PC can take hours, sometimes even days, to complete, depending on which tool is used. This obviously decreases the competitiveness of those professionals who don’t have a high-performance laptop or computer.
Render farms, or groups of interconnected computers, called nodes, which combine their computational and graphic capabilities to process computer graphics images at a speed unknown to simple office PCs, give an answer to this undesirable situation.
What are Render Farms?
The term Render Farms refers to a network of computers structured to work together in order to achieve the goal of providing users with large graphics processing capacity to do the sort of processing that if not supported by this “render farm”, could not be managed by a simple computer.
In fact, a simple laptop could be optimal for the processing of a simple render but when you’re confronted with real-time graphic processing of large projects and scenes – think of graphic processing with special effects created for the cinema, virtual reality videos for large buildings, or even entire neighborhoods – it is necessary to contact a render farm. In render farms, the processor of a single computer works in a network with the other processors that are part of the same network, or “farm”, so that each processor knows what the other computers are working on.
Why use Render Farms?
While these tools are often paid for, they are fundamental resources for reducing processing time from hours to minutes. They also allow the production of incredibly detailed and impressive images and animations on medium-large projects: images that probably could not be produced using a simple laptop. This resource even allows the smallest studio or freelance designer to compete with larger firms.
The 5 best Render Farms to improve your work and allow a small design studio to compete with the big names
- RebusFarm: RebusFarm is one of the best rendering outsourcing services you can find on the internet. The best quality of RebusFarm is the rendering processing speed, made even more appealing by the total absence of waiting queues and the good prices offered. RebusFarm works with all the existing 3D modeling software and plug-ins and the final results are highly reliable and great quality. It is an excellent service for shorter-term jobs.
- Garage Farm: Garage Farm offers CPU and GPU rendering services to designers and artists. Garage Farm is characterized by the ability to process renderings in the cloud and to provide users with an easy-to-use graphical interface that works well with all available modeling software.
- Render Rocket: There’s a lot to like about Render Rocket, especially if you’re operating on a tight budget. This Render Farm offers users a constant and continuous offering of unlimited free previews and free storage space. Plus, having the ability to quickly preview your work before rendering will allow for a faster workflow and an optimized design cycle. Render Rocket runs with most modeling and rendering software;
- RenderNation: This Farm stands out for the solidity and high performance it guarantees. RenderNation is supported by a team of technology experts who constantly improve its performance. “We work hard to provide innovative render farm solutions so that our customers can unleash their creativity” -reads the web presentation of the farm.
- SummuS: SummuS is a low cost render farm that guarantees good processing quality. SummuS offers 24/7 access and support and provides users with results in real time.
- Ranch Computing: Ranch computing is a render farm with an elegant graphical interface that shows the user the variety of rendering services offered. The interface shows different Farms available to “rent” or “buy”. Thanks to the variety of its offer, it is especially recommended for animation studios that regularly use huge amounts of computing power in their work.