Hi everyone! Welcome to Vfxrenderfarm.net, where I record my journey on how I find the best render farm for my studio. I started as a freelance 3d artist and worked for some studios and projects for many years, and right now I’m on the way to building my own studio. I think you guys know how hard it is to run a studio. There are a lot of problems and difficulties, but I will not talk about them as it’s not really related to this website, and I don’t think you guys are interested.
Hi everyone! Welcome to Vfxrenderfarm.net, where I record my journey on how I find the best render farm for my studio.
I started as a freelance 3d artist and worked for some studios and projects for many years, and right now I’m on the way to building my own studio. I think you guys know how hard it is to run a studio. There are a lot of problems and difficulties, but I will not talk about them as it’s not really related to this website, and I don’t think you guys are interested.
After doing some projects on my own (under my small and humble studio of course), I realize I need to find a render farm. When you are one guy in the pipeline, you may not recognize how computing-expensive it is for the rendering. Only when you are the one who’s responsible for the whole production, will you understand. I also did some personal projects before, but how can they compare to a whole big production, right? Naturally, my system cannot meet the demands of that. That’s why we will find a render farm now and let’s not talk nonsense.
But how can I find the best render farm for my studio? I searched on Google, Bing, etc. Is it the right track? I found so many render farms through ads, and I came across some of them from render farm rankings. From what I have experienced and observed, there are 3 rankings from 3 websites you and I can consider (because they invest in their content and provide us useful information).
- CGDirector: they have a post about render farms ranking and I think it’s good for you to have a first glimpse about the definition of a render farm, how they work, and some of the most famous farms you can consider.
- VFXrendering: don’t relate my website with theirs. When I found out about them I was surprised as well. They have some deep information about render farms and other forms of render farms, which is interesting. They also have the rankings – or you can say lists, of which render farms would be the best for each of the 3D programs.
- Radarrender: they are similar to VFXrendering, but I think they are more like listing the render farm that supports your 3D program. Before, they were quite interesting but now they do not provide much insight about the render farm systems and forms.
These 3 websites are the most credible to me. Others do not invest their efforts on using the farms so I don’t have enough trust for them.
After reviewing all three sites, I found out 5 render farms that appear in all rankings and I will list them here in alphabet order:
- Foxrenderfarm
- Garagefarm
- iRender
- RanchComputing
- Rebusfarm
Still, you need to try the render farms yourself to find your own ranking. And I want to do that. I have my own way to measure and I believe in it. For me, the render farm which has the most users may be the best. You may have your own way, and can share with me in the comment section below. I will read them if I have time 🙂
I don’t count the render farm using so much advertising (I don’t like that), because it will affect the number of unique users. However, you cannot know in reality how many users they have. That’s why we will find out by using a ranking that tells which site has the most unique visitors. The site attracts the most unique visitors per month, could be the one who has the most unique users, and could be the best render farm. The ranking below is what I have found:
Based on the monthly unique visitors and organic traffic, we could have a ranking in order: Irendering.net
1. Irendering.net
2. Rebusfarm.net
= Foxrenderfarm.com
= Garagefarm.net
4. Ranchcomputing.com
I can also see that in the Compare paid traffic graph Foxrenderfarm.com and Rebusfarm.net are the ones who spend the most for advertising, while Irendering.net and Ranchcomputing.com do not spend much money.
Of course, don’t ever trust just one criteria. We still have much work to prove if this ranking is wrong or not. And what is better than trying them with a real project? I usually use Cinema 4D, and render in Redshift, sometimes in Octane. I will send my project to the render farms in the ranking and see which one is the best. If you wanna find out the answer with me, just follow the website and support me on Patreon.
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