We are looking to re-render a large number of products in a large lumber of colors.
We were thinking about purchasing our own network rendering machine here in our office. Is it easy to set up and use? Any advice would be appriciated
1) I have a render node here that we use for this exact purpose. Its pretty easy to setup, especially if you have control of your own network and don't need to get a team of IT people to approve what you are doing.
2) It can be a little finicky to set up, so don't get discouraged if the settings seem like they should work and they don't, just keep at it and it will work, and once it is working its very stable
3) You can look into render farms as well if you aren't using the network render feature a lot. If you only have a couple projects a month/year that need offloading, that can be a great option as well.
Quote from: mattjgerard on February 13, 2020, 09:15:09 AM
1) I have a render node here that we use for this exact purpose. Its pretty easy to setup, especially if you have control of your own network and don't need to get a team of IT people to approve what you are doing.
2) It can be a little finicky to set up, so don't get discouraged if the settings seem like they should work and they don't, just keep at it and it will work, and once it is working its very stable
3) You can look into render farms as well if you aren't using the network render feature a lot. If you only have a couple projects a month/year that need offloading, that can be a great option as well.
Thank you so much :) I use keyshot on a Laptop at the moment which works perfectly for a few images but if we are looking to render full ranges then its just takes too long. Did you purchase a render node, or make one yourselves?
Hi Jack,
It sounds like you're planning on only using a single machine for Network Rendering. That's perfectly fine and will in fact make setup very straightforward.
I would advise to get the most powerful machine you can afford, in order to get the best bang for your buck with regard to Network Rendering licensing.
The AMD Threadripper range of CPUs are brilliant for KeyShot. E.g. the Threadripper 3970X would make for a great NR Worker machine. It has 32 physical cores.
Remember that with SMT (multithreading) enabled, you will need a 64-core license to use all those cores. If SMT is disabled (can be done in BIOS), then you get about 25-30% less performance, but you'll only need a 32-core license to leverage all cores. If that makes sense.
Dries
Quote from: DriesV on February 14, 2020, 05:34:03 AM
It has 32 physical cores.
Remember that with SMT (multithreading) enabled, you will need a 64-core license to use all those cores. If SMT is disabled (can be done in BIOS), then you get about 25-30% less performance, but you'll only need a 32-core license to leverage all cores. If that makes sense.
Dries
This is the exact scenario with the HP Z8 that IT bought for us (against our will) We could have bought 2 ThreadRippers for that price, but that's corporate for you.
And they still won't pony up for the 64 thread license, just the 32 so we aren't even using it to its full extent. Support was kind enough to lend me a 2 week 64 core license to do some testing with SMT on and off, and its great to see that I got similar results as to what you are describing. The next tab in my browser is your post at 710fps, of which I am now officially jealous of. My $9k machine under my desk will barely hit 500 under the right circumstances.
Hi both, are there any pre-built machines out there as I have built my own pc before but I'm not confident around building a machine just as a rendering server
We offer long term KeyShot render farm rentals at 3D Off the Page. During your rental period the farm yours to use 24/7 (and only yours to use). We don't require any extra software meaning that you send jobs using KeyShot's own network render software as if the farm was at your location. Another benefit is that as long as you have an internet connection and the firewall is blocking specified ports you can send jobs from anywhere. So if you are at work, home or traveling you have access to the farm. We take care of the equipment, utilities and software.
Send us an email if you are interested running a test. info@3dotp.com