After Effects Renderfarm Setup

Deadline
1

Heya,

I’m currently working out what we need to setup our Renderfarm to also render After Effects projects.
We currently have 15 CPU Rendernodes being more or less useless, since we switched to the Redshift Renderengine.

I have a few questions about this, which the documentation does not really answer…

a) Do i need a full After Effect License per Rendernode? The documentation tells of a “non-royalty-bearing” mode, but has a few limitations. I don’t quite understand the limits though, to be honest… We are basically working with png/exr sequences from our 3d package and exporting Mp4 (H264) and mov (ProRes). I assume at least the ProRes won’t work with “non-royalty-bearing”-mode, am i correct?

b) We use various Plugins in AE, like Frischluft or Trapcode Suite, etc… do we need a license for each of these plugins on every single Rendernode, or is it enough when the submitting maschine has a license?

c) The Renderblades we’d make our After effects nodes do not have a designated Graphics Card. If i understand the documentation correctly, that is no problem, as long as i deactivate the GPU speed enhancement option, whose name i just forgot… Is that correct?

Thank you already for your help and have a great day!
Cheers from Hamburg,

Julian

2

A) No, unless you use CS3 or that period of time where they required an engine license, it should be free. I believe Deadline writes the dummy file for the free license when it’s running too.

You won’t be able to export video across the farm, you’ll need to do an image sequence, when it comes to compiling that sequence you can do so from a machine with the relevant codec license.

B) Depends on the license for that specific plugin, some work for free, others have a free limit, and some require a license, you’ll have to look into each, or render the effect out locally.

C) Unless there is a plugin or requirement for GPU (like trapcode universe) it should be ok and revert to CPU.

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