Best Render Farms for Octane Renderer
Nowaday, GPU rendering enables the use of graphics cards for rendering in place of CPU, which remarkably speeds up the rendering process. The principle of GPU rendering is running across multiple cores on multiple data, focusing parallel processing on one specific task while freeing up the CPU to emphasize different sequential serial processing jobs. To shorten the rendering time of GPU, there are a wide variety of render engines utilizing GPU rendering. Especially, leveraging multiple GPUs simultaneously to render can be 5 or 10 times faster than that of a single GPU. One of the outstanding names that has been widely used by 3D artists worldwide is Octane Render of OTOY Inc.
Because of Octane’s popularity in the 3D world, there are hundreds of render farms out there that provide Cloud Rendering services to solve the big problem of computer performance for rendering. However, having too many options to choose from makes 3D artists confused and wonder which will be the most suitable Render farm for them? Every render farm can advertise that they support rendering with Octane well with the cheapest price, that they are the best render farm for this renderer, but who knows how many percent is the truth. Therefore, in order to give Radarrender’s friends, all 3D addicts worldwide, the most specific, clear, and fair answer to this above question, we decided to conduct a comprehensive test on many leading render farms currently to find out the Best Render Farms for Octane Render in 2022.
Hoping that spending a quick glance on our effort could help you make the most suitable choice for your needs and save much time, effort, and money for your upcoming rendering. We have conducted the test and given reviews of some other render engines that make use of multi-GPU rendering such as Best Render farms for Redshift renderer 2022, and Best renderfarms for Blender, Eevee vs Cycles here if you might be interested. And if the software that you are using hasn’t been shown up. Don’t worry, there will be a series of reviews about each software afterward. Stay tuned to update the latest articles from us!
Assessment scope and method
To be more specific, 3 out of 5 render farms rated as the most worthwhile render farms to use in 2022 in our previous article including iRender, Ranch Computing and Rebusfarm have surpassed hundreds of other competitors to sit on Top best render farms for Octane render 2022. Unfortunately, the other 2 leading renderfarms, Garagefarm and Fox renderfarm, do not support rendering with Octane Render. Hopefully these 2 render farms will soon add Octane Render to the list of supported software so that users could have more options in the future.
The 3D software and render engine used for the evaluation is Cinema 4d R23 and Octane renderer 2020.2.5. As we all know, OctaneRender® is one of the world’s first and fastest unbiased, spectrally correct GPU render engines, delivering quality and speed unrivaled by any production renderer on the market developed by graphics software company OTOY Inc. This renderer advances state of the art graphics technologies with groundbreaking machine learning optimizations, out-of-core geometry support, massive 10-100x speed gains in the scene graph, and RTX ray tracing GPU hardware acceleration. Octane now has integrated and supported up to 21 types of 3D software with various versions. There are 2 types of Octane licenses including Studio and Enterprise Subscription. Studio Subscriptions allow artists and studios full access to OTOY’s acclaimed OctaneRender VFX software and ecosystem through low monthly or annual subscription offerings on a maximum of 2 GPUs while Enterprise Subscriptions offer network/ offline rendering and enable to use more than 2 GPUs.
When it comes to the evaluating process, we bring the same test project including 12 frames with 3000 x 1500 resolution to those chosen render farms and render the project normally until we get the final render output and then calculate the relation between render time and cost, their strengths and weaknesses also to rank these render farms.
For those who would like to have a quick look through our test result:
- iRender – Total Cost: $2.88, Render time: 15.6 min
- Ranch Computing – Total Cost: $13.67, Render time: 2.98 min
- Rebusfarm – Total Cost: $17, Render time: 6.49 min
iRender Farm
iRender is one of the leading render farms specializing in providing high-performance machines for rendering. Rendering is managed on the Web basis. There are some points that make this renderfarm unique. Firstly, unlike others, the whole concept of using here is to allow users to connect, take full and flexible control over their powerful physical server online via Remote Desktop connection, using 100% performance of the selected server, not share it with anyone to speed up render time. Users could flexibly switch between those powerful servers without re-installing the software or re-uploading the files as well.
Moreover, the hardware configuration that this render farm offers is impressive, consisting of cutting edge graphics cards from Nvidia such as RTX 3090 and RTX 3080. This render farm can be considered as the most suitable render farm for Octane Render. The servers range from 1/ 2/ 4/6/8 RTX 3090/3080 and even servers with 8 monster RTX 3090 and the CPU is AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3955WX @ 3.90GHz. If users have Octane Studio subscriptions, the most suitable server is servers with 2 RTX 3090 while servers with 4/6/8 RTX 3080/3090 will be ideal for Octane Enterprise Subscription. Downloading and uploading files to/from the server is also done quickly and easily via their 2-way synced tool named Gpuhubsync. That free transfer file tool is free and unlimited storage. Moreover, iRender supports all versions of Octane render. Having this highly customized feature, iRender is suitable for jobs with large size and complex pipelines and tight deadlines, in which users could take control of the robust servers and customize the scene files directly like they do on their local computer if there’s any change in the assets or materials,etc.
Finally, the render cost in this test is much cheaper than all other render farms that’s not mentioned iRender has many other promotions currently such as Bonus 50% for new customer’s first recharge, Bonus 5% to 15% for recharge from $118 to $1500, or discount 20% to 40% for daily/weekly rental. If users could take advantage of these promotions, the cost of rendering will be surprisingly cheap!
However, the workflow of rendering in iRender is more complicated compared to others for the first time. As mentioned above, users need to manually install software on a new machine (as shown in our testing video). Fortunately, software installation is one time only then all installed data is automatically stored and saved for later usage. Moreover, users need to use their own software license to render in iRender, which is somewhat inconvenient if you still want to use your Octane license on your local computer. Finally, although having no queue time, there is still a chance that users will have to wait if the servers that they are going to use are fully used by others. Rarely happens doesn’t mean it won’t happen! Any users using iRender should be careful with this feature to have the best plan for your rendering.
iRender test results
+ The total number of frames: 12
+ The queue time: No queue time
+ The installing software time: 45.3 minutes (one time only)
+ The render time: 15.6 minutes (excluded the installing software time)
+ Cost: 2.8 $
→ Rendering 1000 frames would take around 21.6 hours and $240.
Based on the testing result, this render farm ranks number one out of all the rest and becoming the cheapest render farm in terms of Price. The rendering cost is 6-time-cheaper than Rebusfarm and 5-time-cheaper compared to Ranch Computing. That is not to mention other promotions such as 50% bonus for the first deposit, 20-40% discount if renting by day/week etc. When it comes to Render time, the renderfarm is in 3rd place. That’s quite reasonable because in this test, we use only 1 node. iRender allows users to use multiple nodes simultaneously (10++ nodes). Users are able to choose to use 2 or 3 or more nodes so that the render time could be down to 2 or 3 times or more accordingly. Another highlight when experiencing this render farm is “no queue time” at all! Waiting is not happiness in the case of rendering!
Ranch Computing
Regarding RANCH Computing, it is also a big name providing a high-performance rendering service for both CPU and GPU-based rendering. Customers could easily access the RANCH Computing farm and utilize the power of a dozen render nodes to speed up the rendering process. They offer their GPU farm service with 2 types of graphic cards including mainly RTX 2080 Ti and one of the best graphic cards in 2021, RTX 3090 as well. Users could leverage the huge number of render nodes to speed up the render time. They offer a maximum of 14 nodes for GPU-Low (0.009 per OB hour), 28 nodes for GPU-Medium (0.012 per OB hour), and 56 nodes for GPU-High (0.016 per OB hour). The rendering performance in the test is extremely impressive to us. Leveraging the huge number of nodes, our 12 test frames were rendered as fast as a wind. The render time is 5-times faster than that of iRender and 3-time faster than Rebusfarm.
Rendering is on the web basis which is quite clear and friendly for users to manage the rendering process. The first step is to download the free and easily-to-use online tool RANCHecker and integrate it into 3D software to prepare and check the scene carefully for smooth rendering after that. This plugin will gather all assets used by your scene, verify the rendering parameters, change file paths if necessary, and warn you in case of possible issues. The rest of the workflow is quite normal including Uploading files, Waiting for the queue list, Rendering and Downloading the results. Fortunately users could submit the project directly from the local computer onto the RANCH. Downloading frames from a secure and fast FTP account is also a strength of this renderfarm.
Nevertheless, same like other renderfarm, users have to queue before being served, which may be vague when waiting for your turn and do not know exactly how long it will take even though Ranch illustrates clearly the queue part. Moreover we noticed that Ranch only supports a limited version of Octane render. To be more specific, for Cinema 4D software from R16 to R24, this render farm only supports one version of Octane is Octane 2020.2.5. Lastly, Ranch has few promotions or discounts. Currently they only give customers volume bonus 10% for all recharges.
Moreover, users are currently able to send a job with under 50GB of data. Rendering very heavy projects put a lot of strain on the RANCH systems, it is therefore mandatory to contact RANCH before submitting any project bigger than 50 GB (uncompressed size of archive generated by the RANCHecker) to check whether RANCH is possible to render your project or not. And finally, the rendering cost at this render farm is relatively expensive compared to others such as iRender. Users should carefully consider whether it is worth investing a large amount of money in exchange for high- speed?
Ranch Computing’s test results:
+ The number of frames: 12 frames
+ The queue time: 1.78 minutes (highest priority)
+ The render time: 2.98 minutes (excluded the queue time)
+ Cost: $13.67
→ Rendering 1000 frames would take around 4.13 hours and $1,139.
The capability to leverage the huge number of nodes help Ranch Computing has the fastest render time. As mentioned above, the render time is approximately 5-time faster than that of iRender and 3-times faster than Rebusfarm. However, the Rendering Expense is such a pain when this render farm holds the 2nd place in terms of the most expensive renderfarms (just less expensive than Rebusfarm). Therefore, if you are having a really tight deadline and high budget is not a problem then you could consider going with this renderfarm. Otherwise, iRender is still a better choice in both Price and Render speed.
Rebus Farm
Final representative in top render farms for Octane render is Rebusfarm. With the experience of more than ten years in the field of 3D rendering, Rebus has been improving a lot to be one of the most trusted render cloud services. Its CPU is Intel i9-7980XE, 2.60 GHz, 18 cores while GPU rendering is the strong points of this renderfarm. Their GPU is the powerful Quadro RTX 6000 which has 48GB of DRAM onboard. This will perform better in memory-hungry professional workloads.
Rendering process on Rebusfarm will be managed on a web basis and using their powerful C4D Render Farm is just one click away. After installation Cinema 4D Render Farm Software 3.0, users will find it inside the Cinema 4D menu. The Farminizer scans all project assets to deliver renderings in the easiest and fastest way. To be more specific, what users need to do first is prepare a project on the local computer, then uploading and downloading files can be automatically or manually managed by the convenient RebusFarm add-on called “Rebusdrop”. Users can monitor their cloud rendering jobs and can start, pause, and cancel all jobs at any time using this tool. Especially, the job will be rendered frame by frame, so it will automatically be downloaded to a folder chosen in advance. That will be wonderful and time-saving if your files are big.
However, a huge drawback of this render farm is related to the Price, Priority and Queue, which means the higher the priority is, the less time you have to queue and the more expensive price you have to pay. The job priority ranges from Standard (0.552 cent/Obh + 0.1 cent/Obh) to Priority 7(2.698 cent/Obh + 0.1 cent/Obh). If you choose the standard option, you might have to sit quietly, cross your fingers and see your files remain not to be rendered, even hours and don’t even know how long it will take. So if you are in a hurry and the farm is full, you will have no choice but to pay more and wait for your turn in the queue.
In addition, Rebus farm does not have many promotions or discounts. Currently they give customers volume discounts from 5% when recharging 500$ to 60% when recharging 50,000$. Rebusfarm pricing is considered as “pricey” when compared with other render farms. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that this render farm has the most expensive rendering cost (6 times more expensive than iRender) while the rendering speed is not the fastest.
Rebus Farm’s test results
+ The number of frames: 12 frames
+ The queue time: 0.45 minutes (highest priority)
+ The render time: 6.49 minutes (excluded the queue time)
+ Cost: $17 ( equivalent to 14.43 RP)
→ Rendering 1000 frames would take around 9 hours and $1, 416.
With powerful hardware configuration, unsurprisingly this render farm ranks number 2 out of 3 in Render Time. However, the rendering cost is the most expensive out of 3. Being the most expensive but not the fastest, Rebusfarm is not the best render farm for Octane but still in the top if you need a fast render solution.
In conclusion those above mentioned render farm including iRender, Ranch Computing and Rebusfarm are top rendefarms for Octane Rendering. In particular, the render cost on iRender is the cheapest (5-time cheaper than Ranch Computing), meanwhile, the render time on Ranch Computing is the shortest (5 time shorter than iRender). Therefore, if you have a straightforward project and small-to-medium scale and a decent budget, Ranch is suitable for you. On the other hand, iRender should be your choice when your project is larger, complicated or needs much customization or adjustment. The render time on iRender could be much faster than the test above if users could take advantage of multiple nodes simultaneously rather than using only 1 node as in our test.
We need to reconfirm again that when evaluating the price and cost, the queue time of Rebusfarm, and Ranch Computing is excluded and those render farms also say that the queue time is not being charged. However, by allowing users to choose the Priority render with higher price, users are directly paying to be rendered faster and are indirectly paying for this queue time. Therefore, queue time is also an important criterion for choosing the renderfarm. The less the better. Here in our test, both 3 renderfarms don’t make customers have to wait for a long time to render their project and more especially iRender has no queue time and users don’t have to pay more to be rendered faster.
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