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Mandelbulber 1.13-1 - for Linux and Win32

Open source program (GNU GPL) for rendering photo-realistic 3D fractals
Free download (executables and source): http://sourceforge.net/projects/mandelbulber/
Website:       http://www.mandelbulber.com/
User manual: http://wiki.mandelbulber.com/index.php?title=User_Manual

New features in version 1.13-1:

- NetRender feature. Possible to create render farms
usage: Start Mandelbulber on server computer. On image tab check "enable server" and then "scan for clients". Ethernet port (5555) have to be not firewalled. You can choice other port. Start Mandelbulber on clients computers. On image tab check "client enable". The client will connect to server indicated by IP and port number. When client is successfully connected on server side will be visible IP address of the client (only under Linux). You can connect as many clients as you want. When all connections are established, uncheck "scan for clients" on server. Now you can press Render button (or start rendering animation) and enjoy very fast rendering.
- in this version the NetRender feature works also under Windows. 64-bit version for Windows is still under development, but it is possible to run 32-bit version on 64-bit systems. However maximum image resolution will be limited.

SVN repository: http://mandelbulber.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/
This repository is available from Google Code: http://code.google.com/p/mandelbulber/

Please give me any feedback about experieces with NetRender. It still could be a little buggy.

I happen to have a renderfarm in an IKEA cabinet. The nodes run Windows 8 (licenses were cheap) and the whole thing is connected via Gigabit ethernet to my desktop PC. One is an Intel core i5 2500K (4 cores) and the other an AMD Phenom II 1075T (6 cores), both with 8GB RAM each.

Will try this out soon.

It's the IKEA Smørebrød, because if you close the door while both nodes are computing - better call the fire department.

Thanks for this new great release, Buddhi! Thumbs up!

One question, though. Why is OpenCL an option for Linux only? What do you need to make it work under Windows? I guess many of us are using Microsoft OS, and openCL drivers are pretty good with it too.

It's because I have troubles to compile the program with OpenCL under Windows. It is possible, but I have problem to find libraries/includes which works properly with MinGW or MingGW64. I'm not so familiar with programming under Windows because I use Linux for about seven years.
What is more I postponed OpenCL feature development (also under Linux), because there are still too much differences between implementations of OpenCl for nVidia and AMD. It's annoying when the program works fine on one computer and on second one it even can't compile the kernel. I'm waiting for really stable and standardized release of OpenCL libraries.
For now I use OpenCL only for own experiments but I'm not trying to do public version of programs with OpenCL.

Even with NetRender feature is not easy life. It was also difficult to make it as cross-platform, because Windows has a little different implementation of TCP/IP sockets. 32-bit version is already released but I have got stuck with 64-bit version. I don't know why, but I can't establish even simple communication between the programs. Under Linux there was no problem to do 32 and 64 bit version of Mandelbulber with NetRender. Also is possible to do communication between 32 and 64-bit programs.

I see, thanks for the answer buddhi.

Actually I'm even less familiar than you are in openCL programming, so I'm afraid I won't be very useful here. Too bad though, I'd have been very interested in testing your software with my radeon HD7970. I guess GPU efficiency should be pretty high compared to CPU's.

In my opinion, it would have been probably more pertinent to use Qt instead of GDK. Qt is an open source cross-platform first class framework including all the tools and programming features you can imagine. All the problems you mentionned would have been easily solved with it.

It is really a pitty, 'cause i think this would push mandelbulbers popularity enormously. But I see also your point. OpenCL seems to be far away from being a hardware independent standard. But I still hope, that it will be soon.
For now, I'm satisfied with 1.12.1 - I only have one machine to render.
Keep up your fantastic program. there is still no match out there for mandelbulber's rendering engine. ;D

FYI, I wasn't able to use the netrender feature.

My network contains three i7-based computers, 8Gb RAM, Windows 7 64bit, no firewall. One of them was the server, the two others were the clients. I followed your instructions (IP address + port settled) but the server never found the clients, and vice versa...
Of course, outside Mandelbuler, everyone can ping each other out.
I wasn't able to check out if the problem also exists under Windows 32bit given that I only have 64bit OS.

Can someone else give feedback ?

Bump ?  :sad1:

I also observe this problem. On Windows XP 32-bit NetRender works fine, but on Vista 64-bit (even with 32-bit version of Mandelbulber) I can't establish connection. For now I'm not sure whether it's firewall problem or there is something wrong in the code.

No, it's not a firewall problem since my tests were done with all firewalls disabled... and yet, the server / clients couldn't establish connection.

For your info, I don't encounter any network render issues when I use another rendering engine such as Luxrender.

Netrender didn't work for me either. Server on Windows 7 32-bit, client on Windows 7 64-bit.
It also didn't work with both server and client on Windows 7 32-bit.

Netrender works with Windows 7 64-bit or 32-bit clients connected to 32-bit linux server.

So I guess there's a tiny fix to do in the code to make it work on windows network between clients/servers...  ::)

I have a 20-node beowulf-type cluster that I plan to run Mandelbulber on.  It is 64 bit Linux, so I won't be having problems with the software's ability to make sockets.  However, the problem is that the slave nodes don't have graphical environments.  I need to run Mandelbulber on the slaves with --nogui mode, but then there appears to be no way to turn on the Image > Client mode without the GUI, using command line.  Is there any way I can turn on the program client from the command line, or could this be implemented?

I hope to share my renders with the community once I get my cluster working.

I'm doing this feature in Mandelbulber now. Please be patient and it will be available nearly. You are not only one person who asks about it.

Will be OK to have only clients working without GUI? I have just finished client mode and it should work now without graphical environment. Now I only need to do packages and do some testing to deploy it. With server will be more complicated to do changes in the program. That's why I'm asking.

Awesome!

I looked around the forums and somehow I missed where other people have asked about this specific aspect, but I am glad it is coming.

Edit:  Just saw the second page.
Yes, having this implemented in just the client is perfectly fine, the server computer has a normal, accessible X environment where I can do the server mode manually.

I have just published new version of Mandelbulber. It has possible to run NetRender client without graphics environment (via terminal, ssh session). However to run it must be installed libgtk because it's the same program as for running under X.
To establish connection first you have to start all clients, then enable the server and click "scan". It should find automatically all clients and show number of them (clients will also confirm connection). After this disable "scan" function. Finally it's ready for rendering.

Example of command line:
mandelbulber -nogui -ip 192.168.0.2 -port 5555 -lowmem
   where:
-ip - IP addres of server
-port - network port of server (default is 5555)
-nogui - starts application without GUI
-lowmem (recomended) - disables functions which consume memory - it reduces memory usage dramatically in noGUI mode and there is no difference in rendering

When clients are run in -lowmem mode, server MUST be also started with -lowmem parameter