Tech Reviews
Razor Blade 15 Studio Edition, Foundry’s Flix 6.3 and Silhouette Paint for Nuke.
So you have a big animation submittal due but your server just went down. Or maybe you typically work in the cloud, but your internet connection is suddenly on the fritz. Or maybe you no longer have the luxury of utilizing your studio’s in-house render farm because a recent pandemic has forced everyone to work from home. Or maybe, just maybe, you have a rag-tag handful of workstations in your modest home studio, but you can’t afford a high-end network and server, but you still need to render multiple shots across multiple computers to make deadline.
Whatever the case, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and create your own makeshift render farm!
Prepare for the Storm
Chances are, no amount of last-minute heroics can save the day if you are ill-prepared. Therefore, in anticipation of emergencies popping up from time to time, you should make preparations while the sky is clear. Here is a checklist of some of the basics you will need to successfully create and operate your own guerilla render farm. Feel free to piece-meal these things together as best you can:
Surge protectors / power backup
As many computers are you can get your hands on — old, new and anywhere in between.
An assortment of memory sticks, preferably high capacity and high speed Multiple mouse controllers and mouse pads Multiple keyboards
Multiple monitors
A good room fan or two
Your animation software of choice
Step 1: Standardize Your Workstations
The first task is to make sure each computer you will be using to render has the exact same software, updates, files and folders as your primary animation workstation. For the sake of this article, you do not have the luxury of a network, so this is when those memory sticks will come in handy. Simply copy all the folders and subsequent files of your primary workstation to your memory stick(s) and then transfer said files and folders to each render machine.
Step 2: Portion out Your Shots
Use a white board, simple spreadsheet or old fashioned pencil and paper to keep track of which frame range is being rendered on which computer.
For example, if you have three computers, respectively named Moe, Larry and Curly, with Moe being your primary workstation, and you have a 1,000-frame sequence that needs to be rendered as soon as possible, divvy up the sequence into three equal chunks based on each computer’s rendering speed. If Moe happens to render twice as fast as Larry and Curly, then Moe should be assigned frame range 1-500, Larry should get 501-750, and Curly should get 751-1,000.
Open the same scene file on all three computers, adjust the frame ranges accordingly, and render. If you prefer to use command line rendering, then you would specify the frame range on each computer via the command line vs. batch rendering within the animation software.
Step 3: Keep Your Eye on the Prize
Being that time is of the essence and you have multiple computers rendering simultaneously, you’ll need to periodically check each machine to make sure they are rendering correctly and not stopping or freezing for some unforeseen reason.
To do this, simply glance at the render status of each computer and if one of them has stopped or crashed, write down the last frame the computer rendered before crashing, reboot and restart the render where it left off. Be sure to update your whiteboard, spreadsheet or hand-written notes accordingly.
As rendering can take many hours, days or even weeks to complete, now would be a great time to catch up on the latest movies, episodes and music that you’ve been wanting to check out but never had the chance.
Step 4: Wrangling
Now that all of your machines have finally finished rendering and your frames look outstanding, take your trusty memory stick around to each computer and copy the frames from the workstation to the memory stick.
Do not, under any circumstances, cut and paste, because if something happens while the files are in transit, you risk losing all your frames to the ether. If this happens, you’ll need to re-render the entire sequence(s) all over again from scratch. And when time is short, this could spell disaster for your submittal.
Once all frames are copied to your primary workstation, you can then composite, edit and export the final content as needed.
With some thoughtful preparation and hands-on guerilla rendering techniques, even when networks and the cloud may fail, you still have a chance to deliver your animation on time and to spec, thereby keeping your clients happy and you replete with much deserved cash. ◆