Question Rendering Animation

[rahulmukerji]

Hi:

I recently started playing with Mandelbulb 3D and thanks to the great tutorials have made my first animated gif ! I was extremely thrilled. I then, after watching some great Youtube videos, decided to try my hand at a video. I could not find much in terms of what is the best config to go for with respect to time and render.

After I had created a decent (by beginners standards) traverse I decided to try and render the frames.

I have a Quad Core, 4GB Ram machine with a 32 bit Win 7 OS. The moment I hit render, all the CPUs hit 100% and the RAM hits about 2.63GB. But after that the machine is pretty much just doing that. I can't use it for anything else. 

I ran the image size at 1600x1200 and 24 hours later only 10% was done. Which meant, the machine would have to be on for ~10 days for all the rendering. I then stopped it and played with the sizing and found at 500x365 it would take ~5 Days ! I played with the PNG vs BMP vs JPG and they all rendered each file at the same rate. I calculated the days based on the render of 1 frame x number of frames. My frames to render between keyframes was set at 120 (as per the tutorial I followed)

My question is, to all who render these beautiful videos:

• What settings do you use for the render
• How long does it generally take to render a single image file
• What advice would you offer to a person who's trying to create these videos for the first time.
  

My aim to be able to render a couple of videos for some project work. I can't afford to keep that machine running for 10 days without disturbing it and using it for other purposes.

I scrolled through some of the forum (and its plenty huge) and found some slices of answers. But I was not able to find all the information I needed, so I decided to ask. Any help at all either by a direct answer or a link to a place where this might have already been answered or to a document would be greatly appreciated !!!

Thanks so much !!

[rahulmukerji]

So I decided to render the images in 500x350 instead. Now they take about 1 min per image to render. Seems decent.

Slightly disappointed I can't figure out (just yet) on how to render bigger files in a decent amount of time.

[taurus]

I have a Quad Core, 4GB Ram machine with a 32 bit Win 7 OS. The moment I hit render, all the CPUs hit 100% and the RAM hits about 2.63GB. But after that the machine is pretty much just doing that.

the memory usage is unusual. a 32bit app shouldn't be able to allocate that ammount of ram and m3d is not so greedy except you render at 8000x6000.

for the cpu i recommend to decrease the thread priority in task manager.

[Madman]

You can reduce the thread priority in M3D itself under the "Internal" tab. If you set it to Lower or Lowest, you will be able to do other work on your PC. I don't know how many frames 10% is in your case, but it doesn't seem exceptional to me. My last project took 13 days for a measly 2'12" of video... (my CPU is a first generation i5)

[rahulmukerji]

I have 4000 frames and I don't think its even a min long !! So it rendered close to 350 frames in 24 hours.

13 Days !! Well that puts some perspective and answers my question on other peoples time frame and expectations.

What were the dimensions of your image ?

[Alef]

1600x1200 would be a pretty useless, if you want to upload to youtube. But having render going on for 5 days is pretty normal. Last animation I rendered for a 3 days, 3 hours and 3 minits or alike. Just calculate, how long it would take, too much could harm PC.

[rahulmukerji]

what would a typical youtube video require in terms of image size ?

[taurus]

some high quality settings would be 1280x720 for simple hd and if your machine has the power in double size at 2560x1440 (for antialiasing)

some simpler 4:3 formats are
480x360
640x480

there are too many possible formats to list them all. theese are the examples, i can directly remember 

[Madman]

This is a useful picture for video formats: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vector_Video_Standards2.svg. The 13 day movie was rendered @ 1920 X 1080. The slowest parts rendered at around 200 frames a day... This was the result: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/qm3RXVlL91s&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/qm3RXVlL91s&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1</a>
View in full HD of course ;-)

[weavers]

Greetings and Salutations to you Madman!


In the language of "Ddndhididudbdbgbwabd," you call, called and, no I didn't but someone did id?
Who thing, was it, as was and it, said red the bottle catalyst, idolatress, mistress of particle physics, eels, birth sealed in place a sign of what will happen in the future; Platonic epistemology holds that knowledge is innate, so that learning is the development of ideas buried deep in the soul, turning in your excellent movie bold?
Here is what we think written in white letters :




                                                           Thank you! Very Cool!

[Alef]

I sometimes agou used to .. hmm steal the videos from youtube and include them in my own. When you watch them, all got saved in your temporary internet files as some files without extention but realy beeing .flv  . (With certain tricks they can be accessed from explorer, say in save as windov). An all videos had pretty poor resolution of 320x240. Could it be that 1280x720 is simply a stretched verison of some 640x480 or even some lower resolution? Or it just resolution I had watched. But HD



There are videscreen 16: (forgottthenumber) and 3:4 resolutions. Gluon glich seems videscreen.

[rahulmukerji]

Hey People !!!

Thanks so much for all your inputs, especially with the rendering sizes and time. I was finally able to render my first piece

Here is the link: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/Oj94H4OiO2s&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/Oj94H4OiO2s&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1</a>

Hoping to start playing with light and gradients soon 

Enjoy  and thanks so much again !

[kameelian]

As others have said, the bigger your frames, the payoff will always be slower renders...and it can take months

But...maybe you can reduce the framerate and therefore the overall render time.

I have 4000 frames and I don't think its even a min long

4000 frames is not even a minute long??

"My frames to render between keyframes was set at 120 (as per the tutorial I followed)"

It seems like being advised at 120 subframes has been taken a bit too literally.
It might be wonderfully smooth movement but could be terribly slow movement too.
I don't think it has to be a constant.

You may need only 1440 to 3000 subframes a minute (@ 24 to 50 per/sec), dependent upon
your movement between keyframes. For example, pressing, say, the 'move forward' button
in the Navi window 10 times, will move you further than pressing it 3 times. Therefore,
120 subframes may not be enough for the first - without it stuttering , but too many for
the second - i.e. slow. It is not easy to tell at first but it will come as you get to know
your style and the program.

I have had to redo much of my best early work due to having too much movement but a
fixed (low) number of subframes between each keyframe.

Incidentally, I have even had to use 20,000 subframes between 2 keyframes in order to coax
certain 'formula mangling antics' into producing sufficient frames for an animation at the right
pace and detail. I didn't render ALL frames, just zoned in to the area that produced the required
animation sequence (say from 8000 to 9000).

Hopefully the new 'interpolate subframe' function in version 1.7.9.1 will enable focusing in on the
correct zones to create the right number of frames for the same (or smoother) anims in these instances.
(In brief tests so far, it has worked very well once and not so well once)

sorry it's a bit late, but hope my two penneth helps
Kam

[zonepatcher]

as a rookie also...any info on animations..I'm all eyes n ears...
concernin yer prob...have you look at n palyed around wit da downscaling button
I have input 2400x1800  50subframes.only 8 frames...==9hrs  9min 40sec  3downscaling...you get  8x7 342MB
if you downscale to 4 you get
 5hrs  12 min 22sec   6x5  193MB...etc
so see if downscaleing will help in any way ?

[kameelian]

as a rookie also...any info on animations..I'm all eyes n ears...
concernin yer prob...have you look at n palyed around wit da downscaling button
I have input 2400x1800  50subframes.only 8 frames...==9hrs  9min 40sec  3downscaling...you get  8x7 342MB
if you downscale to 4 you get
 5hrs  12 min 22sec   6x5  193MB...etc
so see if downscaleing will help in any way ?

Hi zonepatchder,
I'm not quite sure I understand your figures but, as a rule, I see no real benefit in downscaling - you may as well just set a lower size in the first place because, as far as I am aware, it still creates 1:1 picture and so takes the same time to generate but you (see and) get a smaller picture show in the window. I wonder if you are getting mixed up with the preview downscaling (?) - which does change the time and MB - but as it is only a preview, it doesn't really gain you anythng at all for your main render.

Sorry if I have misunderstood. Please clarify.

Further, 2400x1800 is IMHO not a good size for an anim. Go bigger for a still image you want to print but as an anim will presumably only be played in hi-def at 1920x1080, I see no point in producing anything any bigger - yet. I know some folk say go bigger and reduce it, but save yourself some time and reduce it first.


regards
kam