Hello forum, first hd-render test

[.o.]

Hello forummembers,
first of all i want to say thank you for all this interessting and inspiring informations on this site.
i think the visualisation of mathematical dynamics and the visualisation of non existing imaginary objects/worlds is a great tool for artists.
after i saw very nice computer generated videos on youtube, i wanted to know how they can be made.
i have a little experience with the open source programm blender but i used it mostly for pictures and not for animations.
i have started to play with the mandelbulb3d and i am flashed by it. thank you for this programm! it can make the infinite of possibilities visible.

now i want to make a video myself and started to do a tests for a hd camera flight.
i started to render a "short" flight (1800 pics) over night. on the next day i recognized that the rendering process takes much longer as i thought (about 3 days).
so after 22h of rendering i just canceled the render because i didn´t want to spend more time on this test and i needed my pc for other tasks.
finally i got 17sec of video out of my 500 pics

here is the result of this test: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/ScCMsammQJI&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/v/ScCMsammQJI&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1</a>
i am happy with the smoothness of the result, which was the main attention.

i am thinking about buying a second pc for rendering because i don´t know how to handle this long render times.
what are the biggest factors, that strech the render time? i saw that the postprocessing took as much time as the mainrendering.
any other suggestions how to handle this problem?

[taurus]

First of all: Hello and welcome to the forums.
the handling of the render times is quite easy. 1st switch the task priority of m3d to idle. Most other programs should work as fluent as allways (except some picky media codecs). 2nd m3d allows multiple instances to run. start a second instance (in normal priority) and work on as allways... that's it IMHO

[.o.]

thank you for your quick answer taurus!

yeah i had that problem that m3d crashed while i was using such a codec, so i left my computer render alone instead of doing something paralell.
running the m3d multiple times is a great idea! do you know with circa how many instances i can render paralell so that my cpu is used well/efficient? (intel core i7 860 @ 2.8 ghz)
that would be nice to know.

[taurus]

do you know with circa how many instances i can render paralell so that my cpu is used well/efficient? (intel core i7 860 @ 2.8 ghz)
that would be nice to know.

a few catchwords:
the most efficient way to render is with one instance running. only the dof rendering uses one core, all the rest uses all available cores. my last post should only show a way to keep your system responsive. depending on used fractals a 5 minute animation can easiely take several weeks (24/7) to render. but you can save your animation and stop and resume rendering at any time you want.
hope that helps

[.o.]

okay fine.

just tried to resume the test render. i saved the project last time after canceling the render.
the main window still shows the last rendered picture. now i tried to get him render again but all my options in the animations maker are gone.
i see that the animation parameters can be saved seperate. so i guess they are not included when i save the complete .m3i ?

[cKleinhuis]

try making familar with the main renderin options that influence render time, check out the "deStop" it determines how close the ray needs to be at a surface to stop going further, this has to be finetuned, because if it is too large, overstepping occurs which leads to a flickering in an animation

[.o.]

hello kleinhuis,
ty for your answer. yes i am trying to get used to the render parameters and how they influence the picture and rendering times.
played a bit with the options and took a look at the mb3d readme. i noticed that the raystep multiplier takes a huge influence on the rendering time.
so its one thing to get a picture that i like and another thing that it goes well in an animation.
is it adviseable to activate the "varyDE stop on fov" and the" raystep sub DE stop" for a smooth animation?
i can imagine that the "varyDE stop on fov" has visible influence when i for example zoom in/out?

ps: really like your videos! they are very amusing and educational. respect for the work you do here to get the math and arts collaborate better.

[Caleidoscope]

Welcome .0.  

Everybody here is really helpful, very nice. That makes it easy to ask things for it's not like you bother people, no they like to help you.
Thumbs up for all those who want to help others.

I'm afraid I don't know much about all this technic and stuff. I have an older laptop that is just good enough to render and I don't mind how long  it takes, at this time it's rendering a week now  And it's like opening a present when I finally check it out.  After that I take it to my main computer to let the video editor do it's job.  Works good enough for me for now. Hope that will stay that way.  

grtz.
Caleidoscope

[.o.]

hello again  ,

i am just rendering small preview-gif-animations atm, its very nice for testing things and u dont have to wait so long.
if i like the result i maybe go for rendering it in better quality.
would like to attach some of the gifs here but unfortunately they are bigger than allowed.
uploaded one here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/leertaste/13984999417/sizes/o/in/photostream/   

really like the menger formulas with its straight architecture-like lines. they give a nice three-dimensional room feeling.
i am playing with morphing more organic looking formulas into the menger´s now.
and i got a second pc now, just an old one but good enough for doing my other stuff while i am rendering on my main pc.
happy with that too   

greetz

[Caleidoscope]

Looked at it and it's really very nice and interesting.
Thanks for sharing, look forward for more.

Have a nice day.
Caleidoscope