FAQ

How am I charged?

You are charged per core-hour of compute time consumed by your render tasks. GPU instances are billed at a higher rate that includes the GPU. Charges accumulate in real time and appear in Admin → Payment Information after each billing period.

Preemptible (spot) instances cost significantly less than on-demand instances but can be interrupted by the cloud provider. The Virtual Wrangler's Spot→On-Demand feature can automatically upgrade interrupted tasks.

What are spot instances?

Spot instances (also called preemptible instances) use spare cloud capacity at a lower cost — typically 60–80% cheaper than on-demand instances. The cloud provider can reclaim them at any time with a short notice window.

For non-urgent renders, spot instances are ideal. For deadline-critical work, use on-demand instances or enable the Spot→On-Demand Virtual Wrangler to automatically fall back.

What happens if my job is preempted?

If a preemptible instance is reclaimed, the in-progress task is interrupted. The farm will retry the task on another available instance based on the Preemptible Retries setting in the submitter.

Completed frames are not affected — only the frame currently being rendered restarts from the beginning.

Why is my job stuck in "syncing"?

The syncing state means your scene files are being uploaded to the farm. Large .blend files with packed textures can take several minutes. The progress bar on the job detail page shows upload progress.

If sync appears to stall for more than 15 minutes, check your network connection and try resubmitting. The Syncer Virtual Wrangler can be configured to automatically retry failed syncs.

What is a chunk size?

Chunk size is the number of consecutive frames assigned to a single cloud machine in one task. A chunk size of 1 gives maximum parallelism — every frame renders on its own machine simultaneously. Higher chunk sizes reduce the number of tasks but also reduce parallelism.

What are scout frames?

Scout frames are a preview subset of your job that renders first. All other tasks are held until you review the scouts and approve them. This lets you catch render errors, lighting issues, or shader problems before committing to a full render.

Use fml:3 to render the first, middle, and last frame automatically. This is the most common scout spec.

How do I add users to my account?

1. Log in with an admin account
2. Go to Admin → Users
3. Click Add User
4. Enter the new user's email address
5. Click Add User — an invitation email is sent automatically
6. The invited user clicks the link in the email to set their password

How do I set a spending limit?

1. Go to Admin → Cost Limits
2. Click Create New Limit
3. Choose the entity (account, project, or user)
4. Set a dollar amount
5. Choose an action: Send Email (notify only) or Hold Tasks (pause the job)
6. Click Save