cloud rendering vs. build a home render-farm

[tony]

I'm an fx artist and am looking to start taking on some freelance work from home soon.  I'm having the debate as to whether it would be better to build/buy a custom render farm for home or to try and take advantage of the cloud options that are available.

 

I've put a summary of the info I've gathered so far below and I'd be grateful if anybody could offer any advice on this topic or correct anything I might have got wrong below.

 

Cheers,

 

Tony

 

Cloud Rendering

I've seen Amazon and Gridmarkets mentioned here on odforce and the sidefx forums. They seem to be the most popular options, but I also found this list: http://rentrender.com/houdini-render-farms/

of different cloud render farms that apparently support Houdini.

 

Amazon

This seems like a good option as it is the most well documented/tested so far. My main concern though is that I've been reading through the docs and it seems the process for me to simulate and render something would be: 

1. upload hip file

2. do sim

3. download sim files

4. upload hip file again with sim files

5. do render

6. download render

(or do the sim locally at home and skip steps 1-3)

This seems like it would be problematic if the simulation is big, as it would take a very long time to upload/download the sim data.

It sounds like it would be a good solution if I'm just trying to render a simpler scene, but I don't think it will be feasible for fx work with large sims.

 

Gridmarkets

I've just signed up for the beta, so will try to update this once I've done some tests. I'm hopeful this can solve the problem outlined above though based on this video: 

I don't seem to be able to find any cost info on there website so it's hard to know if this would be a feasible solution at the moment.

 

Home Render Farm

From what I've read so far, either custom building or buying a second hand rack/blade server would be the best option for a home farm.

 

The main pros of a home farm I can see are:

1. Once the initial outlay for hardware is done, it should be a lot cheaper to run than constantly paying an online render farm company.

2. It should be a lot faster as all of the hardware would be on site, so I wouldn't constantly be uploading/downloading data from the the web.

3. There's less security issues to worry about (I can see clients/companies potentially not liking the idea of the project data being uploaded to an online farm for rendering/simulating).

4. I can customize it to my exact needs.

 

My main concerns about a home farm are:

1. The initial costs are going to be high.

2. It's going to run up my electricity bills.

3. It's going to take up space in my house and generate noise.

4. It's going to generate a lot of heat.

6. Having to do all of the initial set up/build is going to take some time.

7. If something goes wrong with the hardware or farm software, I have to do all of the debugging and pay for any replacement parts if needed.

[Whatsinaname]

To put it plain and simple, I'd go for a cloud solution and as soon as I got more and more jobs coming in, I might find it makes more sense to switch to my own renderfarm. Maybe get yourself one (or two if you can afford it) extra machines for flexibility reasons.

 

Especially when starting a new business you never know how it is going to develop in the long run, so there is no point in investing into a farm you probably do not need. You can buy your own machines as soon as your business makes enough money you actually can afford a farm. As long as you cannot, a cloud makes more sense to me.

[Guest tar]

Sounds alright - the main thing about business is you never know what will happen - so being nimble with computation and rendering scalability, cash flow, technical skill set etc are all considerations.

 

Everyone runs their business different, so it's almost impossible to advise except to say, try it out, if it works great, if it doesn't modify it.

 

Good luck!

[alksndr]

I like the idea of splitting the difference and having 3 or so computers at home for simming with HQUEUE and use cloud for the rest, at least for now. I think it makes the most sense, you will always want to take advantage of overnight sims and then when it comes to rendering you can use the cloud for a boost, it saves download time at least if you are able to handle all simming locally.

[tony]

Thanks for the advice guys :-)

 

In the end I've opted to go for the Gridworks cloud option. From the tests I've done I've been very impressed. It's not perfect yet, but they've definitely done enough to convince me for now.