KeyShot Network Rendering FAQ's
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      Hardware recommendations for Network Rendering setup

      Recommendations when buying hardware for Network Rendering

       

      KeyShot is 100% CPU powered and it will use 100% of your computer cores. The more processor cores, the faster the render engine. The correlation between the number of cores and performance is approximately linear. In other words, if you double the number of cores, you potentially double performance. If you triple the number of cores, you potentially triple performance, and so on. Check our manual for more information.

      • Below are some things to consider when shopping for hardware.
      • Actual render times are subject to hardware specs, core count differences between Workers, scene complexity, time scale, processor multi-tasking, and network traffic.

      CPU

      I would look into machines that have processors with high core counts. Please review our CPU Best Practices.
       
      RAM
      ALL rendering machines in the network (machines that will be doing the rendering) should have enough RAM to load your KeyShot scene. This is very important. If a rendering Worker does not have enough RAM to load a scene (i.e. BIP file), then your rendering time may be hindered. Normally, 12 GB of RAM is enough.

      Software

      You will need to purchase the KeyShot Network Rendering application from us. This application will allow you to connect all of your computer systems for rendering. You can find the pricing options here.
       
      GPU
      Any graphics card that runs Open GL 2.0 or later will do (all graphics cards these days do). KeyShot does NOT make use of the graphics card for rendering at all In KeyShot 8 and lower.

      Composition

      It is best to have a render farm with few powerful computers (with high core counts) rather than many smaller computers. The rule of thumb is to minimize the computer count and maximize the core count (per computer).

      Workers

      • The workers essentially only receive unpack and render the scene.
      • So for RAM Memory, I would say at least the amount the workstations used for submitting jobs have. But for future-proofing, it is better to have a little more.
      • The workers do not store data beyond the scene, scene resources, and output data. Thus adequate storage to hold that data is required. (Keep in mind the potential read/write bottlenecks, so a fast drive can help to alleviate that.)
      • CPU: The more cores the better
      • GPU: KeyShot uses exclusively the RT cores found in Nvidia cards for rendering, VRam should at least be the same as the workstation
      • Fast network connectivity

      Manager

      • The Manager does not do Rendering so the requirements differ noticeably.
      • The Manager applies the image styles, this process can require significant Memory, especially for high-resolution renderings.
      • The Manager also stores the result data, and scenes in the queue. As a result, the manager needs sufficient storage to store the data.
      • Note: We do not recommend having more than 200 jobs in the queue so that could be used as a guideline. (Rendering with high-resolution textures or rendering high-resolution output will need more space.)
      • CPU: The manager does have a few tasks that do not utilize multi-threading, so the single-threaded performance of the CPU needs to be taken into account
      • GPU: No specific requirements
      • Fast network connectivity