In purpose of load balancing I need to approximatively predict rendering time my graphics software (in the specific case it's Autodesk Maya) needs to render a task given an input file (.ma/.mb) and rendering parameters. An intuitive way to do it is to render several frames from different parts of a scene and to extrapolate the results. Is there a better way to do it? If no, is it enough to render several separated frames or I should take short series of frames in different moments of the scene? 
Is there a way to predict rendering times?
heuristics;graphics