Renderfarmen

Renderfarmen, also known as a render farm, is a cluster of computers configured to render computer-generated imagery (CGI). It is used in film, television, visual effects, architectural visualization, and game development to accelerate rendering tasks by distributing work across many processors.

Architecture: A typical renderfarmen consists of a head node that controls the job queue and coordinating software, multiple worker nodes, shared storage, and a high-speed network. Rendering software and render engines (such as RenderMan, Arnold, V-Ray, Blender Cycles) process frames or image tiles. A render management system schedules tasks, monitors progress, and handles retries. GPU-accelerated farms use graphics processing units to speed up ray-tracing workloads, while CPU-focused farms rely on multi-core CPUs.

Workload and workflow: Artists submit projects to a render queue. The manager distributes frames or tiles to available nodes. Outputs are written to shared storage in a standardized format, then compiled by artists or compositors. Render farms support batch rendering, distributed rendering, and sometimes network rendering across geographic locations.

Hardware and scaling: Farm size ranges from a few nodes in small shops to thousands in major studios. Hardware often includes multi-core CPUs, GPU cards, large-capacity fast storage, and robust cooling and power systems. Cloud-based render farms augment on-premises resources with on-demand instances, offering scalability and cost management, but introducing data transfer and licensing considerations.

Licensing and security: Software licenses may be per-core or per-node and may require license servers. Data security and IP protection are important when outsourcing or using cloud services.

History and trends: Render farms emerged to meet growing rendering demands in animation and VFX. Recent trends include GPU rendering, cloud-based on-demand resources, and automation through render managers.