I’ve been taking a look at some online render farms, other than the market leader Pixelplow which I looked at yesterday. I looked at about twenty. Some have gone bust, some are obviously Germans-only or Chinese-only judging by their lack of English translation. Apart from Pixelplow, the only two I think I’d really want to consider are:
* Renderspell may interest Poser + Reality users. It’s been in 2.0 beta from Latvia (central Europe) since 2015, and offers Poser Pro 11 render support. But not with SuperFly, only with “LUX”, which presumably means Poser + the Reality plugin. Credit cards only, PayPal “coming shortly”, and their pricing information is thoroughly confusing about if it’s recurring monthly payment or a pay-as-you go with a small deposit. Charges “your VAT rate” in Europe, so presumably 20% extra sales tax for UK customers such as myself. But if you’re a Poser 11 Pro + Reality user it might be worth trying, as they seem to be the only one offering it.
* The UK-based GarageFarm.NET has Vue support with Vue xStream 2016. They offer Vue integration in the Vue UI, via their own plugin…
Our Vue plugin is light on memory, and allows you to send scenes to our farm by simply running its script from the Vue interface.
So that’s interesting. They specify “layered multipass for .psd” Photoshop renders, too. Their prices are good too, but that’s defrayed by their wanting a $50 deposit (Pixelplow only wants $10), and being UK-based they have to add 20% sales tax for UK customers such as myself. I did though find a $50-free ‘starter’ coupon-code which might be worth trying: RNTRNDR1
So far as I can tell it’s pay-as-you-go. According to their calculator what, for me, is a 10 hour render would be done by them in 7 minutes for $1. Albeit with 20% sales tax added for the taxman. Their Forum has a handy setup guide for Vue scene files. Definitely one for Vue 2016 users to test against Pixelplow, then.
I see they’ve also just had a $500k investment, so they’re on the up. They also offer Terragen and Cinema 4D. There’s a handy guide to what their price categories mean in terms of time-scale…
