Renderfarm
- Data location: \\renderfarm.bk.tudelft.nl\public (TU Campus/VPN only)
- Maya Renderfarm Connector: Download BK Renderfarm Connector (TU Campus/VPN only)
- Queue status (TU Campus/VPN only)
| Renderfarm Main | Quick Walk-through | Workflow | Frequently Asked Questions | Advanced Topics |
If you want to know how to use the renderfarm, please read the Renderfarm Quick Walk-through. You can find more detailed information in the Renderfarm Workflow page. You can submit your render jobs directly from Maya.
Render Capabilities
The BK Renderfarm currently runs Maya 2023. It should be able to render scenes from previous versions of Maya, but it may yield unexpected results.
Currently, the following render engines are supported:
- Arnold for Maya
- Maya Software
- Mental Ray for Maya (only Maya 2018)
- RenderMan for Maya
Background information
TOI started the render farm project in 2005. It's currently still in use and still 'for free'.
A render farm is a number of (dedicated) computers that render 2D images or image sequences from 3D computer models. In this case the render farm is configured to render Maya scenes. It consists of a number of render nodes (computers with two processors and lots of memory) and a 'master' that distributes jobs and holds all the data. Specialized software enables complex jobs to be split in smaller jobs, merging the results automatically when finished.
Technical details
We're adding new machines to the BK Renderfarm on a yearly basis and older machines are then removed. The current composition is:
| # | CPU | Speed | Memory | Year added |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | dual 10-core Xeon E5-2680v2 | 2.80 GHz | 64GB | 2014 |
| 2 | dual 12-core Xeon E5-2680v3 | 2.50 GHz | 128GB | 2015 |
| 1 | dual 14-core Xeon E5-2680v4 | 2.40 GHz | 128GB | 2016 |
| 1 | dual 28-core AMD EPYC 7453 | 2.75 GHz | 256GB | 2023 |
| # | GPU | Cuda Cores | Video Memory | Cuda version, driver | Year added |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | dual NVIDIA A40 | 21.500 | 96GB | 12.2, 537.13 | 2023 |
The BK Renderfarm is controlled by one master node (dispatcher) virtual machine. If you would like to make use of the Renderfarm, please contact @hok ICT support.
Software
We currently use Muster from Virtual Vertex to manage the render farm. The servers run Windows Server 2019 Datacenter.
