I just posted a series of videos to the tutorials section of my website detailing how to set up your own Autodesk Backburner renderfarm for 3DS Max or Maya on Amazon Web Service’s EC2 Elastic Computing machines.
If you have some patience and a little technical know-how, you can wrangle yourself up a renderfarm of a virtually unlimited number of servers at a price as low as $0.06 per core hour. Many of the reputable commercial cloud renderfarms charge upwards of $0.70 per core hour.
This is a great service for the independent 3D animator or visual effects artist who doesn’t have the time to render on their own single machine or the money to spend on a full service renderfarm solution!