Frame Rates and Rendering Times (fractal related but hardware...n'some)

[kameelian]

Hi, Fractal folks,
 
I'm sure that everyone is aware of how processor-intensive and therefore time-consuming this brilliant hobby is,
but I am wondering what kind of experiences others are having with creating/viewing frames. I was so impressed
with Mandelbulb3D that I have been out and spent a not inconsiderable amount of money on a new PC specially
for the task. So I now run a 4 core i7 2600k CPU overclocked to 4.4 MHz and an Nvidia GTX 580 graphics card
(supposedly the fastest single-processor GPU at this present time). Anyway, I was well impressed that the first test
frame I created with it was ripped through in only 3.7 seconds. This was incredible, as some frames take minutes.
However, I was bought back down to earth when I tried the same render on my old laptop and that managed to rip
through it in just over 15 seconds. So, in real terms, it seems I had got around a 4x increase in rendering speed.
This doesn't sound a lot but it means that a 12 hour animation render can now be achieved in around three hours.
Said like this, it doesn't seem too bad at all, but there is still something slow about my set-up. For example, I have
learnt that, for creating the actual render, the CPU blasts straight up to 100% usage (but can still take minutes to
render - regardless of frame size - depending upon the complexity of the formulas), but when viewing a batch of
newly created frames in Windows Picture Viewer, the resultant animation still stutters and freezes its way through
until every frame has been viewed and (presumably) loaded into RAM, whereupon it will then play smoothly in either
direction by use of the arrow keys. Even with only a couple of hundred frames, this is sloooow. I don't know if this is
something inherent within Picture Viewer or if there is something I can do to 'encourage' my GPU to do its stuff more
quickly [?]  I know there might be a better viewer to use but it still does not change the point that this tardiness is
not what I was expecting from such a high-spec graphics card - which does not seem to have gained me anything at all.
 
Incidentally, how many in-between frames do folk generally tend to use between keyframes - as a compromise between
render time, smoothness and morph quality etc?

cheers all
Kam

[Syntopia]

Software needs to be written specifically for GPU computation in order to harvest the GPU power (unless they do 3D vector graphics through an interface such as OpenGL or DirectX, where the GPU acceleration is built-in).

Neither Mandelbulb3D nor Windows Picture Viewer will use the GPU for computations, so your GPU does not matter here.
It's a shame, because in terms of computational power, your GPU is ~3x faster than your CPU (70 GFLOPS versus 200 GFLOPS for double precision).

GPU Fractal software is beginning to appear (e.g. BoxPlorer 2, fractal.io, my own Fragmentarium), but it is still much more simple then the CPU software.

[kameelian]

Hi Syntopia,

Thanks for the info.

I guess I should have realised that - just like the 64Bit version of Windows needs specifically addressing.

Oh well, at least it's not the card on the blink. I suppose I am just future-proofed for a while yet.

I am still very new at creating fractals and will check out the software you mention.

(oh, and it's Windows Photo Viewer, not picture viewer - my mistake).

cheers
kam

[visual.bermarte]

>Incidentally, how many in-between frames do folk generally tend to use between keyframes - as a compromise between
>render time, smoothness and morph quality etc?

if you want a very smooth animation than you need more in-between frames plus more render time is needed; minimum 25-30 frames from keyframe to keyframe to have just 1 second of animation; plus the difference from the first keyframe to the second one should be ..'little'? or ...'adequate'?..


unless funky-jumps are required (AND it can be nice)  

[kameelian]

Hi Visual,

Thanks for your reply.

Yeah, I understand the theory, but wondered what folk are actually using in practice.

I guess it depends on what's happening in the shot - I've been upto 220 frames before now.

cheers
kam

[bib]

Yeah, I understand the theory, but wondered what folk are actually using in practice.

Hi kam,

To view your animations you have to transform the jpegs onto a movie, for instance a .avi using a program like VirtualDub, the one I use, which is pretty basic but quite efficient.

Regarding the frame rate and intermediate frames, I use in general 25 to 30 frames/second and between 30 and 150 intermediate frames between each keyframe, typically around 50-60, so each new keyframe added represents roughly 2 additional seconds of animation.

Good luck!

bib

PS : I confirm that a fast GPU is useless with Mandelbulb3D.

[David Makin]

For rendering on the CPU e.g. Mandelbulber, Mandelbulb3D, ChaosPro, Ultra Fractal etc. then generally speaking the Ultra Fractal benchmarks give a good idea of relative speeds - this may also apply to Chaoscope and Apophysis and Xenodream among others but in those cases I'm not sure full use is made of multiple cores:

http://www.shadoworld.co.uk/UF5/Benchmark/Benchmark%20results.htm

Of course UF is slower than Mandelbulber or Mandelbulb3D with respect to rendering the 3D+ fractals simply due to its more generic nature and the fact that it wasn't originally designed with 3D ray-tracing in mind and has yet to be adapted to allow "native" 3D coding.

For GPU I recommend Boxplorer or the online software by Subblue (if you have a WebGL compatible browser):

http://www.fractal.io/

However I think both are restricted to float accuracy rather than double - of course that does make them *very* fast indeed, in fact on my Radeon 5870 render times using Subblue's program are not only interactive but realtime

[kameelian]

Hi (again) bib, Thanks for the reply.

quote: "I use in general 25 to 30 frames/second and between 30 and 150 intermediate frames between each keyframe, typically around 50-60, so each new keyframe added represents roughly 2 additional seconds of animation." ....Hmmm, interesting, thanks. Pity about the 'useless' GPU.

I have not been saving to JPGs yet due to the lossy compression, so I have GBs of BMPs(!) Trying Virtual Dub does load without stutters but (so far) it doesn't seem to like frames that break a continuous (contiguous) sequence. So much to learn.

As is the case with Mr Makin's reply. Thanks for the benchmarks. I've tried Boxplorer. Brilliant real time, but not yet able to get a recording of it. Never heard of Subblue. Gawd, there are so many programs _ I'll never see sunshine again. I'm going to concentrate on M3D for the time being.

later folks
kam