Batch Rendering

What is Batch Rendering?

By using the Batch setting when launching a render you will specify a number of frames that are to be rendered as a group by one server. For example, if you have an animation of 500 frames and you set your batch size to 50 then the system will:

Take frames 1-50 and assign them to server 1

Take frames 51-100 and assign them to server 2

and so on...

When to Use it

This ONLY works in your favour for frames that have a relatively low render time. (1-3 minutes per frame). For frames that have those low render times it can cut down on your cost because the server only needs to open the 3D application and load the scene file only once per 50 frames. So for a 500 frame animation with a batch of 50, our system will be opening and loading the scene file 10 times rather than 500. Using a batch size that achieves approximately a total time of 10 - 30 minutes per batch is ideal, so for frames that take 2 minutes each on average to render should use a batch setting of 5 to 15.

The Downside

The downside to batching is some loss in flexibility in picking up frames.  Also there can be some loss in efficiency if you have frames that fail.  The Cons grow in importance the longer each individual frame is, which is why we recommend batching only with low individual frame render times.

For Maya users, a WARNING:  

In "Render Settings", under "Frame Range", there is a button to "Renumber frames"  Please make sure this button is UN-CHECKED (Turned OFF), if you are using Batch Render.   

     > If the button is "ON" each new Batch will OVER_WRITE the batch before it!

     > The result will be that you only get the last 20-frames for your job.