Approximate time calculation of render times
Yes, doing animation requires a lot of render times.
Buffff … yes, that’s right, it’s too much.
So ask yourself this question, if on your computer (which for sure is not a bad one) you need 6 hours to calculate a complicated scene, …
How much time will I need to calculate one minute of full 4K animation?
25 x 60 x 6 = 9600 hours = 375 days = 1 year
It is no time to get depressed. But yes, we must be aware of our limitations before committing ourselves to our client.
Currently, the usual thing, depending on the customer and the final product, is that your animations must have HD resolution (1280×720) or, at best, full HD (1920×1080).
The calculation of the render times is simple:
Minutes / frame x number of frames = calculation time.
I recommend that you shouldn’t be optimistic about this operation. Always think of the operation in the worst case scenario and rejoice later when the calculation times of some scenes lower your average.
In our experience, with a small render farm consisting of high range and well-loaded ram computers,
every scene that is between 20 and 30 minutes of calculation per frame, falls within a reasonable result.
The conclusion is obvious: to do animation we need and we will need more and more computing capacity. That forces us to invest money in machines and ram or to contract the services of render times in the cloud.
Alternatives to the calculation
Throughout these years we have always asked the same question:
Is it worth having my own render farm?
Theoretically, the answer is no.
It is much more reasonable to rent the services of calculation in the cloud. Why?
I will give you several reasons:
1. Your initial investment is zero.
2. You only spend what you consume and you can assume it within your budget.
3. You do not have to rely on the expense of air conditioning.
4. You do not need to maintain the equipment.
5. You can always count on the most powerful machines at that time
As you can imagine, the drawbacks of an own render farm are:
1. Your initial investment is high and each time you will have to invest more
2. You have to pay even if you do not have work to do at that time
3. You have to cool the machines when they work
4. You need to maintain equipment constantly
5. Like cars, since you buy the machines they lose value.
Additionally,
6. You must have a physical space conditioned for them.
However, perhaps wrongly, we have done all our work with our render farm. Because of course, having it in your studio also has some (few) advantages:
1. You access the machines physically and that may be essential.
2. You control everything from the beginning to the end.
3. After an initial investment, the machine calculation cost is zero.
My recommendation is a hybrid:
3 powerful nodes in your studio and count it in the cloud for projects that require a lot of power.
Do you want to discover the third secret? : SECRET 9 | Aspects of animation : Action Brush Strokes