I want to set up a Flamingo nXT render farm

Rendering Flamingo
1

I have a model (Rhino 5 x64 approx 60mb) that I need to render with multiple materials and texture (10 to 15 per) schemes. My thought is that if I have a render farm I can set up the scheme and send the render to the farm. I would then open a different scheme variation (3dm file) modify - then send to render farm - while the previous is being rendered. This loop would continue for 8 or 10 variations. Currently these renders take 2 -3 hours each and my workstation is basically unworkable during the render.
Study has indicated that a render farm is the answer but I have questions regarding the setup for maximum workstation performance. The optimal rendering time is not my primary concern at this point.

  1. Can I push the render button -> send to farm then close that session of Rhino and start a new session on my workstation?
  2. Where should the farm manager be hosted? Workstation - farm node - other win7x64 computer on network.
  3. Should all the resource files (3dm & materials) be hosted on a NAS? This is where I plan on saving the renders produced by the farm.
  4. Is there something else I should be thinking about?

Refurbished computers are cheap at this point and my intent is to start with 2 identical Intel Win7x64 machines for the farm and add more as the project demands. Is RAM a critical issue? 4 GB is standard but I can buy up to 16GB per if need be. Are there any other considerations?

Thanks for any input,
Robb

2

An external render farm will definitely be able to take the strain off your workstation and allow to continue working on Rhino whilst it’s rendering. Your render manager shouldn’ t have any issues queueing jobs either.

When positioning your render farm manager the key points to consider should be, is it networked and always on. This could be either your workstations one of the render nodes or a any other system on the network.

Ideally you should keep all your resource files on a NAS, as each of the Networked Render nodes require access to these files. A NAS is a simple convenient way to allow access to your files across many machine over your network.

Getting the right render node hardware is important. You will want to try and get a good balance of CPU and RAM to achieve what you want. Both are critical to this task and if one is lacking then your renders will bottleneck and your performance will be effected.

I work for a company called Workstation Specialists who design and engineer computer hardware for this purpose:


If you’d would like any further help and advice feel free to contact us.