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I'm new to animating in Blender. I made three simple animations using Geometry Nodes in Blender 3.1.0 Alpha. All three are grids of rectangles, animating procedurally. There are also some procedural materials which I've rigged up in the Shader Editor.

I want to render them out in a higher quality, as I limited the initial output quality in order to get them rendered out in time. I was hoping to do this by using a render farm, but I saw that services such as Rebus Farm and DropAndRender don't support my version of Blender.

Is it possible to render out an animation made in Blender 3.1.0 Alpha Geometry Nodes using a render farm this way? And if not, how would I best go about preparing the animations such that I can use a render farm? Any help is much appreciated, since I'm not sure how most of this works.

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  • $\begingroup$ A bit late to answer, but it may benefit someone else who has the same question. Geometry nodes might create issues if the project is created with a Blender version and rendered with an older version on the farm. So I advise using the same (or a newer) Blender version for the final render. If this is not possible, render some test frames first with the Blender version available on the farm, to make sure everything renders correctly with that setup. If you still need a farm for your project, we have full support for Blender 3.1 at RenderStreet, including Geometry nodes. $\endgroup$
    – Marius from RenderStreet
    Commented Mar 16, 2022 at 13:28

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I reckon you can always export your scene into alembic, though it will not conserve the materials, you will have to transfer them back.

That being said, 3.1 has been released now, so render farm services should probably have this version available soon if it isn't the case already.
Also, that is part of why you shouldn't use unreleased versions of softwares for your projects, they literally have no support.

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  • $\begingroup$ It's not always possible to avoid using unreleased versions; especially if they have bug fixes for bugs that are stopping your project. It's also a somewhat risky but useful way to get a head start on a project. Unreleased versions have varying degrees of support. They're made available so that users can test them and developers do fix bugs in alpha and beta releases as a way of getting to a final release. $\endgroup$
    – Marty Fouts
    Commented Mar 12, 2022 at 16:12
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for your feedback. You raise a good point by stating that it's unwise in cases like these to work in the latest (unreleased/unsupported) versions of software. Unfortunately I need the renders by coming Tuesday, which will be probably be too short before any renderfarms will be compatible with 3.1. About transferring back materials: What do you mean by this? My materials are dependant on instances of the GN-modifier, so I don't know if it will be possible to get the same result. $\endgroup$
    – Namrad
    Commented Mar 12, 2022 at 16:33
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Probably not, but maybe. Render farms typically support a range of Blender versions and have instructions for how to set up your render. It usually takes them a while to add a new release of Blender, so what you want to do won't work until two things are true, but should work once they are:

  • You install official 3.1, which was just released, on your machine and make sure that the official version will handle your file. There are usually changes between alpha and final, but often they don't affect files.

  • The render farm installs official 3.1 and makes it available.

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  • $\begingroup$ Alright, I will have to look into how to make my file compatible with the versions the renderfarms can run, if at all. Good lesson here to not work in the unreleased/unsupported versions of software. Thanks for your feedback! $\endgroup$
    – Namrad
    Commented Mar 12, 2022 at 16:28
  • $\begingroup$ Don't take away "never work with unreleased" because there are times when you can get away with it. Take away "working with pre-released versions entails certain risks; don't use them if you can't afford to take those risks". $\endgroup$
    – Marty Fouts
    Commented Mar 12, 2022 at 16:36
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We Fox Renderfarm support Blender 3.1.0 Alpha Geometry Nodes.

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We support Blender 3.1.0 at GarageFarm.NET already (official stable release) since the release day.

We had available Alpha, and Beta builds some time already on our end. Of course, we cannot support all daily releases, but we can always add support for specific daily build upon request. Just let us know, and we will help you :)

Geometry nodes should evaluate correctly when rendering on multiple render nodes, as far as we know. However, it is still a relatively new feature, under constant development, so we recommend rendering a test first. You can render a few frames from your animation evenly spread over the rendering range via the step parameter (for example, render 1to250, to render every 20th frame, set range this way 1to250s20).

You can test your project with the free trial credits that we offer.

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