Build Your Own Render Farm

Another installment of Tom's Hardware's how-to articles has a look at what it might take to build your own render farm. The article looks at everything from top-to-bottom roll-your-owns to buying things pre-built and the pricing insanity that goes along with it. "If you are working as a freelance artist in the above-mentioned media, toying with the idea, or doing so as a hobbyist, then building even a small farm will greatly increase your productivity compared to working on a single workstation. Studios can even use this piece as a reference for building new render farms, as we're going to address scaling, power, and cooling issues. If you're looking at buying a new machine and are thinking of spending big bucks to get a bleeding-edge system, you might want to step back and consider whether it would be more effective to buy the latest and greatest workstation or to spend less by investing in a few additional systems to be used as dedicated render nodes."

Comments

How to Jump Your Own Shark!

[eldavojohn]

Considering this article and the last one from Tom's Hardware, I cannot wait for the next Tom's Hardware articles:

Build Your Own Annoyingly Segmented 10 Page Article!

How to Run Out of Practical DIY Ideas!

Host Your Own Ads for Under $1000!

Turn 50% of Your Site into Flash Ads in One Day!

How to Fake Content!

Embedding Popup Ads the Automated Way!

Going from Pioneer to Slowly Losing Relevance in 10 Easy Steps!

Earn Pennies a Day By Inconveniencing Your users!

R.I.P. Tom's Hardware.

Recycling?

[Monkeedude1212]

OR - if you get a real job, at a real company, they'll give you their unwanted outdated computers for FREE.

Seriously! Build a massive render farm out thousands of 286's!

Re:Recycling?

[mcgrew]

My grandparents rendered on their small farm, but unfortunately I hate lye soap.

This is a factory farm!

[Anonymous Coward]

The only sustainable approach is to allow the geometry to roam freely outside your coordinate system. And shading should be confined to what can be achieved with natural sun light no matter how low the framerate.

Re:This is a factory farm!

[nschubach]

I hear non-factory farming also produces denser images that are more pleasing to the eye and have a higher contrast value. Besides, you'd be helping out the small rendering businesses by only selecting local renders.

roll-your-own

[basementman]

"everything from top to bottom roll-your-own to buying things pre-built" Is there some way to get high off computers now? I tried smoking all that junk that fell in my keyboard but it just smelt like burnt hair.

Re:roll-your-own

[nschubach]

Keyboard dust is made of people!

Re:roll-your-own

[Em Emalb]

I tried smoking all that junk that fell in my keyboard but it just smelt like burnt hair.

Dude, if my co-workers' keyboards are any indication of the "typical" keyboard out there, you're damned lucky you didn't kill yourself.

EIE I/O

[Anonymous Coward]

If you run your render farm on PowerPC's you can put their eieio instruction to good use!!!!!

Re:Ask a Slashdot Pimp

[thedonger]

And three months to finally get laid, and three hours of crying afterwords. Followed by three apologetic phone calls, three stalking incidents, three calls by her to the police, a restraining order keeping you three hundred feet from her at all times...

I already have my render farm.

[Hurricane78]

It's called a botnet.

TYVM.

Re:Ask a Slashdot Pimp

[oatworm]

It's a classic open source strategy. He's letting the nerds have free sex, then charging for support. I mean, eventually the nerd will want to know where the clitoris is, right?