Anyone using outside rendering farms / virtual pc's for processing only?

[VisualDandD]

So I have been playing with more rendering lately.    Mostly TM.  I have essentially what is the fastest box one could build (before the 4090 cards came out).

 

For RTX it is fantastic, but I am looking into rendering video.   Even doing 30fpx with ray trace the times are days with 3080ti,   I am doing about a minute of vid and it will run for 2 days to accomplish.   (cant wait to see how it comes out).

 

So I did a quick search on rendering farms where you rent a virtual computer.   Found monthly, weekly and even hourly rentals.   Equiv to to 10-1080 Ti cards running on some.

So has anyone here ever used any?  If so which might one recommend.   I dont do enough of it to justify monthly or even weekly rental, so hourly would probably be best bet.   

 

Any thoughts?

[Kbird1]

I haven't heard of anyone doing it for Chief, but if paying Hourly , maybe it's time to just buy a 2nd computer with a 4090,

and YOU charging the Hours to your Clients  ( and Forum Members as a Service? )  to eventually pay for it.

 

* didn't I hear you say just a week or two ago "I only dabble in Rendering"   -  yeah right   , some nice work in your other Thread(s) by the way....

 

M.

 

[Renerabbitt]

 

1 hour ago, Kbird1 said:

anyone

I do
and HERE is my affiliate link

10 gpus will not doing anything within chief, they would in a program like thea.
but you can rent a 4090.
You could also, alternatively, set your sample rate lower and get an AI denoiser to denoise frame by frame. 

[Kbird1]

20 minutes ago, Renerabbitt said:

and HERE is my affiliate link

 

Your WEB link triggers my Trojan Blocker Rene.............

 

M.

[Renerabbitt]

2 minutes ago, Kbird1 said:

 

Your WEB link triggers my Trojan Blocker Rene.............

 

M.

that's because it is an affiliate link, it does a redirect and tracks your machine so that if you purchase something from the site I get a credit for it

[robdyck]

I started making a TM video with RT but realized it would take too long so I made this without RT. I looked into a 3rd party but haven't used one yet, so I'll be following this thread to see what others are doing and I'll post any info I can as things develop.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CmdAp8PqqFQ/

[VisualDandD]

14 hours ago, Kbird1 said:

I haven't heard of anyone doing it for Chief, but if paying Hourly , maybe it's time to just buy a 2nd computer with a 4090,

and YOU charging the Hours to your Clients  ( and Forum Members as a Service? )  to eventually pay for it.

 

* didn't I hear you say just a week or two ago "I only dabble in Rendering"   -  yeah right   , some nice work in your other Thread(s) by the way....

 

M.

 

 

 

I really  dont render all that much.   But every once in a while, I get a bug up my butt to mess around with it.   I have a few high(er) end projects going and I think they are worthy of putting the time in.

 

I have a pretty fast pc.

i9 12900k

32gb 5200mhz mem

3080ti

etc.....

 

This took about 1 1/2 days to render at max settings.  The client was not expecting this.  I just promised them stills for Monday.   I am curious to see what they think.

Client is a builder and this is a spec home some hoping to secure future work if they feel this is worthy of marketing the home long before they dig dirt.

 

 

 

 

12 hours ago, Renerabbitt said:

 

I do
and HERE is my affiliate link

10 gpus will not doing anything within chief, they would in a program like thea.
but you can rent a 4090.
You could also, alternatively, set your sample rate lower and get an AI denoiser to denoise frame by frame. 

Thank you!

 

I looked and TM does not support multi-gpu , but might be interesting to just use a virtual 4090 machine just to not tie mine up.   I might look into buying one if I do more rendering.   I dont know if it is worth it though for me to take the time in doing the renderings.  I know my son would love my 3080ti as a 'hand me down'.   

Then he could put his 3070 in our driving simulator!

[Kbird1]

14 hours ago, Renerabbitt said:

that's because it is an affiliate link, it does a redirect and tracks your machine so that if you purchase something from the site I get a credit for it

 

That will do it .....

 

When you said I Do I thought you meant you offer Render Farm Services as well now , not that you Know someone who does....

 

M

[Kbird1]

2 hours ago, VisualDandD said:

I might look into buying one if I do more rendering.   I don't know if it is worth it though for me to take the time in doing the renderings.  I know my son would love my 3080ti as a 'hand me down'.   Then he could put his 3070 in our driving simulator!

 

Nah be selfish  

 

2 hours ago, VisualDandD said:

I have a pretty fast pc.

i9 12900k

32gb 5200mhz mem

3080ti

etc.....

 

the perfect PC to "drop back to" while your new i9 13900KS with 64GB DDR5 Ram and a 4090 is rendering

 

I think that Video will definitely help , 1 comment , and it maybe deliberate?  is it that it moves a little quickly at least for those of us who aren't Millennials   who i assume are not the target demographic here.

 

M.

 

[Renerabbitt]

4 hours ago, VisualDandD said:

but might be interesting to just use a virtual 4090 machine just to not tie mine up

Exactly, sometimes Im running multiple jobs at once and this is a life saver...also when I go down to costa rica I don't need to bring a big machine

[VisualDandD]

1 hour ago, Renerabbitt said:

Exactly, sometimes Im running multiple jobs at once and this is a life saver...also when I go down to costa rica I don't need to bring a big machine

Thanks man.  I may look into it.  I dont render much, but this might be a good option if I start to increase the amount I do.   Doing stills is a non-issue with my box.  I can process 35 stills in approx 10-15 min.  

If I do video though, I can see the need.

I wish I could justify doing more rendering, but the challenge is for it to be worth my time to do them....   The prevalence of overseas 'cheap' rendering has spoiled a lot of people and the perceived value is not all that great on this (from what I have seen) .  

 

 

[Renerabbitt]

15 hours ago, VisualDandD said:

The prevalence of overseas 'cheap' rendering has spoiled a lot of people and the perceived value is not all that great on this (from what I have seen) .  

I’ve been offering rendering services and stay competitive overseas for over two decades and I can say with confidence that I don’t do it for the money, haha, I barely make wages on rendering.

you have to provide a rendering in under four hours time or you lose your shirt.

all the exterior renderings I show in the gallery were all just models provided, no landscape, finish product had to be under four hours.

This isn’t your “best-day-ever-no-issues-no revisions-no back and forth emails” 4 hours either. It’s repeatable, I can get all of the detail and quality I want from the first email to the written contract to the final post-processed produced image including custom objects and materials that aren’t always available in the library. 

other than that you might get a client that wants to do a render and you may do it because you want to, and yes, that’s great, do it and have a blast

or do it because you’re bored, or your proud, or because you can’t help yourself. 

Only times I make money on renderings is when they buy a big stack of them, because then it’s just time in post for me.

[VisualDandD]

1 hour ago, Renerabbitt said:

I’ve been offering rendering services and stay competitive overseas for over two decades and I can say with confidence that I don’t do it for the money, haha, I barely make wages on rendering.

you have to provide a rendering in under four hours time or you lose your shirt.

all the exterior renderings I show in the gallery were all just models provided, no landscape, finish product had to be under four hours.

This isn’t your “best-day-ever-no-issues-no revisions-no back and forth emails” 4 hours either. It’s repeatable, I can get all of the detail and quality I want from the first email to the written contract to the final post-processed produced image including custom objects and materials that aren’t always available in the library. 

other than that you might get a client that wants to do a render and you may do it because you want to, and yes, that’s great, do it and have a blast

or do it because you’re bored, or your proud, or because you can’t help yourself. 

Only times I make money on renderings is when they buy a big stack of them, because then it’s just time in post for me.

 

 

Yep, you sum it up quite well.   I very much enjoy rendering.   Just never found a way to justify the time it takes me to do it and what the 'market will bear' as far as compensation goes.

 

I was doing VR stuff years ago (I still love that for getting the 'feel' of spaces.   Hell, now it is almost easy with so many software packages integrated.

 

Anyway, it comes down to working with good people who appreciate your talents.   I have been lucky that appreciate what  I do.   I have hopes to do more, but I am not holding my breath.   I have had clients who sub out to overseas renderings, and I will be honest that the final product is nice in many cases.   Many of them have to draw the homes as well.  (I wont share CAD files with clients, only the PDF const drawings).   So the overseas rendering people have to draw everything.   I cant imagine how it can be worth their time.   

Working from a CORRECT chief model would be do-able.  I could see that working.   But there are lots of good guys out there such as @Renerabbitt who occupy that space.  (Your work is incredible and I would not hesitate to refer anyone to you for your quality).    Rendering is such a fun creative process and it has come such a long way in the past 20 years.

I can remember using the Pov-Ray on old chief.  Watching the tiny dots fill in hour by hour.     Only to realize you wanted to change a small thing and have to start all over again    RTX is/was a game changer for me.   It made/makes rendering so much more practical.    

 

I will draw the digital vs film camera analogy.    RTX has made rendering easier in the way that digital cameras make people better photographers.   If you do 20 images, you are bound to catch a good one  .    "Back in the day", the processing took so long, you really had to know how to set up an image.   You could not afford to clog your computer up for 9 hours rendering a image that ultimately would not be useable.    Not so with RTX.   Your 'misses', just take a minute to generate and are no big loss in productivity.     

 

  

[Renerabbitt]

21 minutes ago, VisualDandD said:

misses

Thank you.. labor of love for sure. People associate me with rendering but I make almost nothing on it like I said. Just something I enjoy doing.

I don’t know how to say this without feeling like a braggart… my photo manipulation skills are world class. I compete in photo manipulation contests and help a large number of people in various photo manipulation discord servers. If you don’t know what that is, it’s specifically taking image resources and stitching them together to create a finished and believable image. 
The only reason I ever got into the art is because of the rendering “misses.” My friends know they will get a couple of prank photos out of me throughout the year..don’t mess with the man that can make you do anything in a photo , ha!

nowadays im so fast with photo manipulation that you might catch me replace a rendered window with a real one if I feel like it, and it would be faster than a re-render. 
here’s an image

 

which was created from the following images. No other images were used… which means you have to take the following images and manipulate them to create the final image I have shown.. no other outside images allowed

 

this was a contest I was a part of.

i also created two other images from the collage of provided images.

so all 3 were created solely from manipulating the collage images. No painting any pixels allowed, no hand drawing, only manipulation through warping, hue/saturation and curves adjustments, etc.

kindve a hobby of mine now

[Renerabbitt]

An example of photo manipulation on a chief render.. took 2 hours:

[VisualDandD]

@Renerabbitt  I wish I had better PS skills.  I know enough to be dangerous, but there are definitely times where PS would be easier than re-running some things.  

Your talent is evident.   Really cool and equally as impressive!

[MarckusW]

Over in digital film world, meaning Arri Alexa, Red, Blackmagic Design, taking days to render anything past 30 secs to a minute is just the way it is. The only real solution was minimally a dual xeon tower or really a render farm. The only thing that has been a game changer has been the RTX cards. 

 

Over here in Chief world the RTX cards were and are a game changer. 

 

The improvements from series to series are huge and if you have the money to buy 2 2080tis and are thinking...  wow, wow, wow. Don't bother just get a 4080 or better 4090.

 

The bottom line is if you want a high-end movie render, it is going to take time. 

 

The best advice I can give you is, if you want to polish a movie after export, I have always preferred Davinci Resolve to Premiere/After Effects or Final Cut Pro. 

 

I like Davinci Resolve so much that in 2013 I started importing CPU ray traces into resolve and grading them as I would in Lightroom or Photoshop. The tool set, controls and finish were just better. For the level of anything you will do with anything coming out of Chief and TM or anything similar, the free version is all you need. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Chrisb222]

12 hours ago, MarckusW said:

Davinci Resolve 

 

That looks great, thanks for the tip!

[MarckusW]

10 hours ago, Chrisb222 said:

 

That looks great, thanks for the tip!

You are welcome Chris. If you try it, it has like everything a learning curve. 

 

If you have a question send me a message. The answer is usually simple, you just need to know where to look.

[VisualDandD]

On 1/31/2023 at 12:07 AM, MarckusW said:

 

 

The best advice I can give you is, if you want to polish a movie after export, I have always preferred Davinci Resolve to Premiere/After Effects or Final Cut Pro. 

 

I like Davinci Resolve so much that in 2013 I started importing CPU ray traces into resolve and grading them as I would in Lightroom or Photoshop. The tool set, controls and finish were just better. For the level of anything you will do with anything coming out of Chief and TM or anything similar, the free version is all you need. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since I have very little experience with post processing.  Can you give me an idea from the one rendering I just did (first time I attempted to render any significant motion vid) what type of improvements post processing might yield?

 

It is WAY outside my wheelhouse and I dont even claim that rendering in general is something I consider myself skilled at.   I just know enough to mess with it now and again.

But IF post processing would yield good results, what might they be and what is the time involved vs said improvements?    Appreciate insights from someone in the know on this. 

For the vid, I just verified and adjusted my render setting on stills and then let it run.    100% honesty, All the scenes have identical settings (which I know I could improve if I set each camera with different optimized settings).

I am just trying to balance out what real improvements can be had vs actual time investment and trying to get an understanding whether pursuing post processing would be 'worth' it. 

Thanks for any input, this is the video I would love feedback on.

 

 

 

 

[Doug_N]

Just my opinion on the video.  The rendering is spectacular, with a well chosen backdrop.  Materials and placement of furniture are also spot on.  My only quibble is that the pans are much too fast, not letting the viewer let the scene soak in.  Overall idea is awesome.  

[VisualDandD]

6 minutes ago, Doug_N said:

Just my opinion on the video.  The rendering is spectacular, with a well chosen backdrop.  Materials and placement of furniture are also spot on.  My only quibble is that the pans are much too fast, not letting the viewer let the scene soak in.  Overall idea is awesome.  

I was given a sample vid (of a real social media campaign of an actual home for sale) from realtor to emulate.  It will go out on social media.   They wanted it less than a minute.  I get you, but in todays tic tock/instagram/facebook, even the 56 seconds is long.   Instagram used to limit stories to 25 seconds.

 

 

[VisualDandD]

@Doug_N  this is where it is actually going.  I did a model of the lake island for the builder.   I did not use it as the 'back drop' since the builder was not sure what lot he was placing the house one.   What I did was really a 'proof of concept', but when I insert it in my actual site model, I think it will really 'pop'.

This is the model of the actual lots and cove (also this was in what I consider 'rough' as I did not do grass...etc).   But the homes on here were just sample homes I had lying as place holders to see scale.

 

This is GIS data of the entire lake area, converted into a skp file in sketch up with an aerial image overlay.  Then brought into chief and converted into a symbol.  Then exported as DAE and into TM.

 

I did a little experimentation on how in TM I could improve the look of the imported terrain.  There is one still I did.  If you look at right hand shore line of fist pic, I have a nice rocky transition that looks a lot better.  vid was rendering without RT.   Quality will come up to stills...but of course A LOT more detail would need to be added. 

 

 

 

[MarckusW]

5 hours ago, VisualDandD said:

 

Since I have very little experience with post processing.  Can you give me an idea from the one rendering I just did (first time I attempted to render any significant motion vid) what type of improvements post processing might yield?

 

It is WAY outside my wheelhouse and I dont even claim that rendering in general is something I consider myself skilled at.   I just know enough to mess with it now and again.

But IF post processing would yield good results, what might they be and what is the time involved vs said improvements?    Appreciate insights from someone in the know on this. 

For the vid, I just verified and adjusted my render setting on stills and then let it run.    100% honesty, All the scenes have identical settings (which I know I could improve if I set each camera with different optimized settings).

I am just trying to balance out what real improvements can be had vs actual time investment and trying to get an understanding whether pursuing post processing would be 'worth' it. 

Thanks for any input, this is the video I would love feedback on.

 

Justin, possibly in post you could mask the sky and give it more blue. Same with other areas. The problem is how much of what you have done is recoverable. You have to think of it as a digital negative.

 

Resolve is like photoshop in motion so for example if you wanted to go crazy you could drop a movie into the TV on the side of the building as you pan. You can composite in whatever you want but...

 

This is a world of diminishing returns. Meaning how far do you have to go to communicate to your client to get them to agree to what you have done.  Having never imported a render such as your, I have no idea what I could do with it before it breaks. I would start as possible by increasing the dynamic range, meaning bring down the blacks and shadows in your case. I would do additional sharpening. 

 

At a certain point you lose cost effectiveness. I suspect whatever you did this in would allow you to improve the dynamic range and sharpness. 

 

Increase the dynamic range by dropping the black level and and pulling down the shadows. The high lights and colors are over exposed in some areas. Having not played with what you are using I don't know the controls. If you do not have control of the dynamic range and exposure then you have to go to something like Resolve but that takes you into the world of Marvel and DC. 

 

Bottom line: I like what you did and I think it communicates.

 

5 hours ago, VisualDandD said:

 

 

 

 

 

[VisualDandD]

1 hour ago, MarckusW said:

 

Justin, possibly in post you could mask the sky and give it more blue. Same with other areas. The problem is how much of what you have done is recoverable. You have to think of it as a digital negative.

 

Resolve is like photoshop in motion so for example if you wanted to go crazy you could drop a movie into the TV on the side of the building as you pan. You can composite in whatever you want but...

 

This is a world of diminishing returns. Meaning how far do you have to go to communicate to your client to get them to agree to what you have done.  Having never imported a render such as your, I have no idea what I could do with it before it breaks. I would start as possible by increasing the dynamic range, meaning bring down the blacks and shadows in your case. I would do additional sharpening. 

 

At a certain point you lose cost effectiveness. I suspect whatever you did this in would allow you to improve the dynamic range and sharpness. 

 

Increase the dynamic range by dropping the black level and and pulling down the shadows. The high lights and colors are over exposed in some areas. Having not played with what you are using I don't know the controls. If you do not have control of the dynamic range and exposure then you have to go to something like Resolve but that takes you into the world of Marvel and DC. 

 

Bottom line: I like what you did and I think it communicates.

 

 

Thank you for the well thought out AND informative response.

In Twin motion, one does has a decent amount of controls.  You have a camera exposure, but you can also play with environmental light and then of course direct sun light. 

 

I choose to use all dynamic skies (meaning it is rendering my actual sun and sky for all the light).  There are HDRI sky models which if you are a  noob, you can get good results faster, but I find to get (my) best images, I want a true dynamic sky.

Getting that blue sky is tricky depending on sun positioning.  (it is easy with a sky backdrop)   

Same exact lighting environment in both these pics but different sun orientation to the camera.  

 

I just try to get a little better each time I play with this stuff.   But  I might actually be seeing more a demand for it which is why I am back playing with it.

 

Thanks for you help!