Extra machines for rendering

[dbit]

I'm curious what people consider some of the better options for additional lower cost machines for rendering. I've heard some people mention minis or mini servers, I've also heard people mention getting pc based render nodes, although I'm not sure if there's added difficulty in parsing out render jobs to windows based machines from macs? I've also heard that additional nodes are more important than the power of each individual node. If this is the case, would two basic minis be better then a mini server? I'd honestly like to go pc for rendering if it's not that challenging.

I'm transitioning from motion graphics for the web to video, some cinema 4d and after effects stuff, and I'm kind of new to the concept of render farms/nodes etc and am trying to understand what the best low cost options are to offload some of this work and keep working on my primary machine.

 

[matteusclement]

Low cost option? Go PC.

Other than that, there really doesn't seem to be a "low cost option". Mac's are not cheap. But if you do go that route, it's all about CPU, nothing more, nothing less. The cost of getting the Mac Mini's would be better spent for a future upgrade IMO.

 

[cgbier]

Does your software support render farms or are you gonna use third party solutions?

I only know Compressor and Farmer Joe, but for both of these packages you have the absolute same build of your software on each machine. Blender recommends to use Farmer Joe on Macs if your main workstation is a Mac (there still seem to be differences between OS's with the builds).

 

[juanm]

Have a look into Deadline. It's a high end rendering manager, and I think it's free for 1 node, so yo can try it.