This page will help you to estimate the cost of a Cooperative Project. First, let's calculate the Samples Per Pixel (SPP) gain you can expect from the RANCH, compared to your system.

Download the diffuse_transmitter scene and run it on your system with the default parameters (10 minutes limit, 1024 x 768). When this is done, enter the SPP reached in the 'Your SPP' field, then click on 'Compute'. The SPP difference factor between your system and the RANCH - let's call it DELTA - will be displayed. You can apply this DELTA factor to all your projects. For instance, if your system takes one hour to reach a given SPP, you know that in the same amount of time, the RANCH will reach this SPP * DELTA. The RANCH reaches SPP = 29350 in 10 minutes on the diffuse_transmitter scene. A concrete example: Your SPP on the diffuse_transmitter test is 196, and you want to reach a final SPP of 3000 on your project: how much RANCH time do you need? Simple: in your case, DELTA=150. The only thing you have to do is render your project on your system with a Samples Per Pixel limit of 20 (3000/150), and note the time needed to reach it. That's all you need to know, as the RANCH will need the same amount of time to reach an SPP of 3000. If it sounds good to you, you can then enter this time in the cost estimator at the bottom of this page. Your SPP (diffuse, 10 mn) :  DELTA = :  (+- 5%)

How to use the cost estimator below:

In the first field, enter an estimation of the preparation time of your project (loading textures, building meshes, etc.). This is the time needed for various calculations before the rendering itself begins. Two minutes are automatically added to account for the distribution time of the scene across the whole network In the second field, enter the render time limit you will specify when you submit your project on the RANCH. In the third field, enter the size of the IGI file generated by your project, in megabytes (MB). To do this, simply launch a render at full resolution on your computer for a few minutes, until Indigo has written on disk the first IGI. Then enter its size in the 'IGI size' field. On a large renderfarm, gathering and merging big IGIs from a lot of nodes can take a while. For instance, gathering and merging IGIs on the entire RANCH takes around 6-7 minutes with 576 MB MXIs. The individual IGI size limit that can be processed with our parallel multi-merging technique is around 2.5 GB. If the render time of your cooperative project is >= 60 mn, the IGI gathering+merging phase is FREE!     Preparation time (mn):  (> 0 and <= 180) Render time (mn):  (> 0 and <= 720) IGI size (MB):  (> 0 and <= 2500)