This is written in light grey to show you how much money it would have cost to render it with credits. This is just an indication. For renders that you actually paid for, cost is written in white (not light grey).

Okay, thanks, that is good news 👨 Why would I choose to render it with credits? To pay the exact amount that it costs you to keep the machine that does the renderings running for the amount of time my rendering takes? Sorry for not being informed on this topic at all :b I do not even know how this exact process works...

Anyways, thanks for the very quick answer! Again I want to stress that your website is awesome, in my opinion by far the best service that is out there online 😃

Like you noticed, some options can only be used with credits. Having the indication on how much a free render may have cost can help you to figure out roughly how much you would pay for the render with better settings. E.g. you change the resolution to 200%, the render will cost 4x more (4 times more pixels).

I had to design the software and buy and build the hardware myself. It is made of 6 powerful computers only used for this task. These are hosted in my house and connected to the internet via optical fiber.

All in, I invested about USD6000 in hardware and it cost about USD3000 per year to run (mainly power and internet service provider) without the countless hours of work I invested in this project. No need to tell you that I won't be able to reimburse the money I invested from my pocket as most people just render free stuff.

So having the credit option allows to help the service to survive for people who want to get bigger/better images.

When you render an image, if you don't pay for it, I do 😉

Thanks for the kind answer 👨 It is insane that you did all the work and invested so much! I really hope you will "get the money back", either from people getting credits, or from advertisements!

But it is a shame that you can only donate via PayPal D:

@Languste, you can also support the site on PATREON, like i do! 😉 https://www.patreon.com/mecabricks/overview

@Scrubs
Okay, only accepting PayPal is tough, but this won't stop a lobster who set something into his mind >:D With the help of a friend's PayPal account, I was finally able to support you!
Now I will have currency for more renderings than I will probably do in my whole lifetime, but I did it for the support anyways :b I hope that you will continue doing your awesome job here at the website! There are many things in the every-day life that are worth being supported, and I want them to exist for much longer, of course. I guess I will support more stuff in the future (concerning all different aspects of life) ; thanks for being so active on the forum as well, great that you talked about that in such detail! It payed of... quite literally ^^

Have a great evening and stay awesome as you are!

~ Languste

😉 That is really appreciated!
Not many people know how the system works in the background. They click on a button and a few seconds later an image appears.
So I think that providing this kind of information can help understand a bit more about the complexity of what happens behind the scene.

If you are interested here are some pictures I took during the development stage last year:
https://twitter.com/Mecabricks/status/926736326820446209
https://twitter.com/Mecabricks/status/931078835004510208
https://twitter.com/Mecabricks/status/932538592550719490
https://twitter.com/Mecabricks/status/937121602629656577
https://twitter.com/Mecabricks/status/937177510348914690
https://twitter.com/Mecabricks/status/937205816171433984
https://twitter.com/Mecabricks/status/968361315491373061

You are so right about that!
But oof, I never had an idea on how complex it is! I like how it not only works, but also looks awesome!

Umm? Is there a limit of how many renders you can do daily?

@ApocalypticBrick, yes for Free renders there is a daily limit of 10. But if you pay for it there is no limit. https://mecabricks.com/en/credits

@Sealund. Thanks! I will take note of that! 😉

Sorry, but I want to ask, does the ammount of bricks used in your model will higher up the price, or you'll have to pay to render a model that is built using more bricks?

Price is calculated based on the real time it takes to render. If you have more bricks in the scene it may take longer for the render and therefore it may be slightly more expensive. But that is not the only parameter. Transparent materials also require much more calculation for instance.

OK, thank you!

i just have a question does the limit ever reset?
i know the limit is 10 free renders but i made 10 renders yesterday and i can't make anymore.

It is based on a rolling 24 hour period. Not actual days.

thank you! that really helps me out

So if i made a render with 1000+ pieces with the daily 10 renders would it be free, or would it cost money due to it's size?

As per the information given on the credit page, you can not.

help!!, my problem is that when i rendered my model (that had less than 100 pieces) i saw the project and it costs $0.028, but that was when i changed the HDRI thing, i wanna know if to change the HDRI is free because is very cool and i don't want to have problems using it
(sorry but i'm new here)