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i figured out how to use the DOF...do the render first then enable DOF and click the update button, then it takes a normal amount of time instead of 500000 hours.

The OpenCL stuff is still really new, and I think Buddhi's still working on it. Also, I think he said somewhere that the actual code is different for the OpenCL side of things, which accounts for the differences is shading etc.

For long renders, such as animations which I want to leave rendering overnight, I've been using AutoIt to keep things moving along. It's an automation/script/macroey thing.

I've set up a script that checks every few seconds to see if Mandelbulber's still running, and if it's crashed, it restarts the program, clicks the mouse in all the right places, and sets the animation render running again.

The only problem is that I can't find a way to grab the error dialog box that pops up because it doesn't have a title, so I've just been using version 1.18, which just quits the program when it hangs.

In fact, Buddhi, if you're reading this, I'm afraid I've another feature request, but it's only a small one this time.

That error dialog box that pops up when OpenCL crashes, would it be possible to give it a window title please? Just so AutoIt can check for its existence, and take appropriate action.

I've been saying it for some time, but I think I'm going to make a concerted effort to build Mandelbulber on my system this week. Then I can try and learn to do this stuff myself rather than hassle you every time I have an idea.

It's just MinGW, GTK2+ and libjpeg that I need, isn't it?

As far as I know (and I'm no expert), it's either not possible, or just very very hard to build Mandelbulber on Visual Studio. There's some discussion on it here.

I'll be using Netbeans, just because I'm used to it, but I'm more of a Java programmer myself, and my C++ is rudimentary at best. Something I'd really like to rectify.


Aha, that might just give me what I'm looking for. Thanks very much. Like I say though, I'm not brilliant with C++ so it might take me a bit to get my head around, but I'm going to have to if I want to get my hands dirty under Mandelbulber's bonnet.

I think AutoIt does have a way of hooking windows by their internal IDs, but I'm just not sure how to reliably get those internal IDs. Maybe I should look into other automation utilities, but I think AutoIt's meant to be one of the more versatile ones.