Student FAQ

We currently have educational pricing for rendering. If you are interested in educational pricing for any of our other services, please contact us at support@stratuscore.com

What is Educational Pricing?

• Render credits are offered to students and educational institutions at $0.20 cents per render credit.
• No render package purchase required
• You must be qualified to receive educational pricing.

How do I get set up with an Educational Account?

Click here for instructions on how to get your account set up for educational pricing.

How do I buy Educational Credits?

• Get qualified for an educational account
• Load your credit card into your account
• Start Rendering!

To load your credit card into your account:

• Log into your account.
• Click on "Manage Account" in the upper right hand corner.
• Click on "Payment Methods"
• Load in your credit card information and save your data.

All render credits will be billed at 0.20 cents per render credit for render time used. 

How do I start rendering? Can I do a test render?

Please click here for a guide on how to get started. We offer free test renders.

We STRONGLY encourage all students to test their renders before they launch their final render.  Testing is important to validate the output is correct, benchmark processing time and identify any tweaks that may need to be made prior to spending any money on your render.

Free tests are limited to any 5 frames in your scene (they will be watermarked).  Make sure to select Test Mode when launching your render.

Some output options are not available when using test mode, like .EXR.  However, they are available when rendering in standard mode.

If you have questions about support for a specific output, send an email to support@stratuscore.com.

When performing final renders in Normal / Standard mode, industry standard outputs are supported by Render Rocket.

How long will my render take and how much will it cost?

There is no way to determine with certainty how long a project will take to render.  Running a good test of your scene will enable you to determine project costs. There is no typical render, frame, project or shot.  From scene to scene, customer to customer, everything varies. Considering the complexity of a scene, it's geometry, layers, and camera angles, there is absolutely no way to know how long a render might take without first testing the scene.

The only way to estimate render time is to run a good test of your scene to get an "average per frame" render time which is needed to calculate core hours (render time) and credits (cost).  After running a good test, use our Project Estimator to determine your project costs and render time.   

A good test is a sampling of frames throughout your scene.  The sampling should include a mixture of quick to render (less complex) and longer to render (more complex) frames.  Sampling is important because an average frame render time is used when calculating core hours and core hours are needed to determine your project costs.  Limiting your testing to the quickest and easiest frames would result in a lower average frame render time; lower core hours; lower costs and most likely a vastly inaccurate estimate.  The good news is we offer Free Unlimited Testing. You can run as many tests as needed for any project, or the same project.  We also provide support and account management to help you through every step. To run a good test, please use our Free Testing.

More on core hours and render estimates  

Do I need to watch my jobs after I submit them?

It's your responsibility to monitor your render projects.  Since you are the creator of your project, you know more about your project than we ever could (correct output, resolution settings, layers, camera angles, etc.)  You will be the one launching your project and determining your settings and therefore you must monitor your project.  If your project is not rendering as you expected it to, Support will likely not recognize visual discrepancies.  Only you will know how your final output should look, or what project settings are.  In fact, we don’t even access your scene files unless you open a ticket with an issue, and request assistance.  If you fail to monitor your job and have made a mistake on your project files, you will be responsible for the time used on our servers (render credits used).

Refunds

We do not offer refunds on any prepaid render credit packages.  Please see our Refunds page for detailed information. We do not offer refunds on any unused render credits within a package.  We do not offer refunds for mistakes made by the customer (incorrect scene settings, resolution, wrong frames run, etc.), so please monitor your renders.  We do not offer any partial refunds or retroactively adjust any student accounts should they have rendered prior to getting set up as a qualified student. 

We will offer refunds through a render credit adjustment should you encounter an issue with your render job that originates on our end.  Should you encounter any problems, you can pause your job if it has not completed (or abort it to immediately end any additional charges), and open a support ticket right away by emailing support@stratuscore.com.

I'm having technical problems, how do I get help?

Students receive full access to our Support Center. Please search this Support Center for additional, useful articles. You also have access to our the Artist Care support team for any technical issues or questions. Email us at support@stratuscore.com or click the "Support" button in the bottom right corner of your browser window. We're here to help!