7) Grid-based rendering
In these final tests, the Kixum scene was rendered in 800 x 600 and 1600 x 1200. The Grid plug-in for Carrara was used to overcome the 5 nodes limit. The tables below show the results for the renderfarm described here. The left tables show results for the entire renderfarm with tile sizes of 128, 64 and 32 pixels (16 seems buggy, nodes do not render at 100% CPU). The right table shows the detailed statistics for each new PC added to the renderfarm for the 64 pixels tile size. 'N' is the number of external Computing Units (the number of gray 'N' squares representing external nodes).
Searching for the optimal tile size for the renderfarm at 1600x1200 : 64 gets the best results here.
Left : the renderfarm at work. Right : finished image. Warning : 2048 x 1536 screenshots.
Searching for the optimal tile size for the renderfarm at 800x600 : 32 gets the best results here.
Just for fun : a small video showing the renderfarm at work (320 x 240 render).