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Fractal Software => Mandelbulb 3d => Topic started by: P_B on September 13, 2015, 01:16:59 PM




Title: Long animations
Post by: P_B on September 13, 2015, 01:16:59 PM
what to do with a 42,000 frame animation, that is not complete?

started it when i first grabbed Mandelbulb3D, and it got put on the back burner at 1672 keyframes.

it uses "Octahedron4" formula only, starting off in a solid ball formation, and a zoom of 0.5, currently at a zoom level of 3.843E5 (E13 being system or program max), current alterations to formula fields are in the 0.00001 with large impact. as it stands, it would take around 30,000 MB of memory to render in one shot at 480x360 at a 1:1. i simply do not have anything near that. i do have 8 that i can work with, and an i5 64-bit system. just loading the save file causes the program to lag a little.

so what do i do with this movie? i know i can always take the last keyframe and start a new file from there to keep the load lag down, but then im just gonna end up with another 42,000 frame animation, that will just be a continuation of the first.

any thoughts anybody?


Title: Re: Long animations
Post by: Sockratease on September 13, 2015, 02:01:29 PM
what to do with a 42,000 frame animation, that is not complete?

started it when i first grabbed Mandelbulb3D, and it got put on the back burner at 1672 keyframes.

it uses "Octahedron4" formula only, starting off in a solid ball formation, and a zoom of 0.5, currently at a zoom level of 3.843E5 (E13 being system or program max), current alterations to formula fields are in the 0.00001 with large impact. as it stands, it would take around 30,000 MB of memory to render in one shot at 480x360 at a 1:1. i simply do not have anything near that. i do have 8 that i can work with, and an i5 64-bit system. just loading the save file causes the program to lag a little.

so what do i do with this movie? i know i can always take the last keyframe and start a new file from there to keep the load lag down, but then im just gonna end up with another 42,000 frame animation, that will just be a continuation of the first.

any thoughts anybody?

Yes, animations eat TONS of memory at almost any resolution.  Fortunately, you have many options.

You can set the start index to any frame you like for easy resuming of rendering.

If storing  and overall memory is a problem, you can render in pieces and save individual image sequences to compressed files on an external drive  (1 or 2 TB external drives have gotten a lot cheaper lately).  Then just save the drive for the day you have a computer able to render the animation with a decent video editor.

Then there's the option of somehow finding a cloud based solution for storing the files (many online file storage hosts exist, and I would not be surprised to find an online rendering solution for image sequences to mp4 files with H265 compression in the not too distant future, assuming none exist yet).

If none of those appeal, there's always rendering 42 movies of 1,000 frames each   :embarrass:

My advice is to start small and build up to working with larger sequences.  I find when rendering such long animations I all too often run into a glitch in the middle I failed to expect and it can ruin months of rendering time!

Hope that helps, and good luck with the work!

And...

Interesting personalized text you chose there   O0 

And as for your signature, my coordinates in the fractal universe are imaginary!


Title: Re: Long animations
Post by: P_B on September 14, 2015, 05:38:07 PM
Yes, animations eat TONS of memory at almost any resolution.  Fortunately, you have many options.

You can set the start index to any frame you like for easy resuming of rendering.

If storing  and overall memory is a problem, you can render in pieces and save individual image sequences to compressed files on an external drive  (1 or 2 TB external drives have gotten a lot cheaper lately).  Then just save the drive for the day you have a computer able to render the animation with a decent video editor.

Then there's the option of somehow finding a cloud based solution for storing the files (many online file storage hosts exist, and I would not be surprised to find an online rendering solution for image sequences to mp4 files with H265 compression in the not too distant future, assuming none exist yet).

If none of those appeal, there's always rendering 42 movies of 1,000 frames each   :embarrass:

My advice is to start small and build up to working with larger sequences.  I find when rendering such long animations I all too often run into a glitch in the middle I failed to expect and it can ruin months of rendering time!

Hope that helps, and good luck with the work!

And...

Interesting personalized text you chose there   O0 

And as for your signature, my coordinates in the fractal universe are imaginary!

I think I might be leaning toward the 42 movies. seems to the most reasonable thing to do. first of course, do the first 1000 frames, cause that will make or break it.

I grabbed Vdub not do long ago, works great for converting the .gif to a .avi. havent gotten  H265 codec, works with Vdub? I hope.

I thought you'd get a kick out of seeing that there.

and, how do you go about spotting your co-ord's when you are randomly spawned in an infinite fractal universe?
I say you just call it " 0 " for who ever, and where ever you are.

Anyways, thanks for the tips.


Title: Re: Long animations
Post by: schizo on September 22, 2015, 08:34:44 PM
Hey P_B,

.gif to a .avi? Are you using the "Render preview" feature to render the animation? Well, this is just for a fast preview (except you use to render every single frame and no downscaling). If you want to render the final animation, then use the "Start rendering animation images" to render all frames and save them as single images into the output folder as (BMP, PNG or JPG). You can also render a range of images from the animation so you can render in several sessions. Just drag and drop the first frame into VirtualDub and Virtual Dub loads all single images and you can save then as animation (dont forget to change frame rate).
42000 frames? This would be an animation with a playtime of around 1 day!

about "randomly spawned in an infinite fractal universe": you start near the center [0,0,0] which is always a good starting point for most formulas.


Title: Re: Long animations
Post by: Sockratease on September 22, 2015, 09:13:20 PM
I think I might be leaning toward the 42 movies. seems to the most reasonable thing to do. first of course, do the first 1000 frames, cause that will make or break it.

I grabbed Vdub not do long ago, works great for converting the .gif to a .avi. havent gotten  H265 codec, works with Vdub? I hope.

I thought you'd get a kick out of seeing that there.

and, how do you go about spotting your co-ord's when you are randomly spawned in an infinite fractal universe?
I say you just call it " 0 " for who ever, and where ever you are.

Anyways, thanks for the tips.

Hi.

Virtualdub is among the best free video editors out there, it helps to have a good converter too since I don't recall VD being able to save out mp4 files  (which are where h-265 works).  If saving avi then converting, try to save uncompressed before conversion to start with the best quality.  Repeated compression of the same file is what causes distortions and artifacts which lower the quality and enjoyment of the final product.

Another pitfall to avoid when first learning to make videos with MB2D is to watch for Linear vs Quadratic Bezier interpolation of keyframes if rendering in separate sequences.  It only picks up exactly where it leaves off using Linear - Quadratic makes smoother camera paths, but can cause weirdness if not rendered all at once.  You can render all frames and manually group them into folders later if using Quadratic Bezier  (that was one which I learned the hard way   :hurt: ).

Good luck with it!  Have fun and feel free to post your results here when finished   :dink:


...42000 frames? This would be an animation with a playtime of around 1 day!...

At 30 frames per second that is about 24 minutes, not 24 hours   O0