Preparing Blender Projects for a Render Farm

Prepare local files for upload

There are two common upload methods:

• You can send a zip file with all local assets packed in it. All paths must be set as relative in Blender.
• You can also pack all external files into your blend file. This will make your file noticeably bigger, so you need to watch out if you do not exceed the file sze limit of render farm

For a lot of render farms we need to bake add-ons, scripts and simulations in the blend file. Animations have to be baked to keyframes.

Reduce render times

• Faster render times save your time and money. In Blender Cycles you can use mesh lights or area lights. The latter render a bit slower than mesh lights.
• Use denoiser: it is a huge time saver, you only need to remember to keep a balnce between render samples and denoising to avoid sploches and detail reduction
• Use render layers - you will be able to tweak individual layers after you get them from render farm, with no need to re-rendering if you for example want to change the diffuse color of one material.

Common Mistakes:

• Not organizing your files correctly. Make sure that you have all your files in correct places, saved with relative path, zip only the main folder, not subfolders. Some render farms can automatically search for missing files and resolve this problem before rendering
• Use PNG losless compression to reduce transfer times, large file sizes