Render Farm Notes
- Please make clear note of the distinction between rendering to an individual computer and performing a net render.
- Rendering to an individual computer places the burden of the entire render job on a single computer; this process, if applied to a large render job, can possibly take several hours, and will preoccupy that computer for the entire process.
- Performing a net render places the job into the queue of the Render Farm, which distributes the job across many computers in the SOA Computer Lab, drastically reducing render times.
- There is more information in the note below. If you have problems, or don't understand this process, please feel free to ask Tech Support.
Render Tips
- Make sure that the video & audio compression settings are set properly before making the video. (See 3DS Max Rendering: Creating a video in VirtualDub)
- Ways to reduce the file size of animations and renderings while maintaining high quality.
- Fake GI (Global Illumination). Good quality and depth of GI but it is expensive on time and computer resources.
- Fake GI Tutorial
- 3D Studio Max - Global Illumination Fake
- The tutorial shows how to create a sky dome of 36 lights. Max already has a skylight feature, but it is a time/resource hog. This light setup is not a hog because it takes advantage of the shadow-mapped shadow which is the lowest quality shadow. If the shadow settings are adjusted correctly you can still get amazing large single renderings for Architectural modeling and smaller multiple frame renderings for animation.
- If some students limit themselves to a feature such as this and avoid ray traced and area type shadows and ray traced materials, it may greatly reduce the impact on your rendering farm. This set-up is good for object based and exterior scenes, not so for interior scenes.
- See this Render and Lighting Tutorial for further information.
Tutorial Videos
One stop shop for UTSOA Render Farm step by step, video walk throughs, with voice over: Render Farm How To's
