Roger
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Posts posted by Roger
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The advantage of the new stuff occurs to me when I think about this...
My current PC with a Q6600 cpu does the teapot benchmark in about 5 minutes, but the people putting together the machines with the i7-4770 are doing it in only 1.5 minutes.
One core on their machine does almost as much as the four cores on mine can do... and they have four cores too! It wouldn't make sense for me to build another machine like I have now for render farm purposes even if it was half the price of the newer machine.
Wow that is just nuts, that a single core is almost 4x as fast. I didn't think there was that big a difference in instructions-per-clock between the Q6600 and the i7 series. I can only imagine the people that bought those shiny new Macs with the FireGL Pro GPUs are champing at the bit waiting for AM to support OpenCL, that would really speed things up.
I guess I am not in any huge hurry to build the farm, at this point I don't know that I really need to unless I start rendering to 2k or 4k or use some really time-consuming render technique.
When I am ready to build it I guess I can get by with Win 7 licenses, it probably doesn't make sense trying to be too cheap. As Robcat pointed out, you end up paying in other ways.
Fuchur where are you getting Win 7 licenses that cheap? I'm not sure what the conversion rate is but I think that works out to like $35-$45 US? That seems to be too good to be true. The cheapest I have found so far online for Win 7 licenses is $75 US (I only really need 3 licenes tops, right now, and ideally they should be Win 7 Pro licenses so they support two sockets).
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That seems like an awfully specific estimate. Did I miss the joke?
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I stand corrected. Apparently XP licenses are cheaper than I thought, found several for $10 or less. How much longer is AM supposed to keep working on it?
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Fun fact: the packaging for Windows NT had to include a notice that "NT" was a trademark of Northern Telecom, the company I worked for at the time.
One logistical problem with Windows NT might be that although it can use a multi-CPU computer there's no version of NetRender that would run on it that can make use of more than one CPU on a machine.
I think you're right, although I doubt it would work with anything more than 2 cpus or 2 cores. I'm sure hyperthreading would confuse it.
The netrender thing would be a problem. I'm just looking for a low dollar, low resource resource for Windows licenses. XP is a bit too pricey on E-bay.
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So for all of you that wanted a Neolucida but missed your chance to get it on the Kickstarter, here it is:
http://www.momastore.org/museum/moma/Produ...p;storeId=10001
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Does anyone know what the last version of AM that ran on NT 4.0 was?
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Where are they, exactly? I've got friends and family in CA.
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I wasn't aware that was a requirement, that AM had to run in basic mode.
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Is there a reason AM would be doing this? I think that might be why I'm having display problems.
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Well I wanted to do a Breaking Bad tribute piece. While it is fiction and has science, I'm not sure it would be considered sci-fi (unless I have Walt cooking his meth on a UFO).
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I've got some old 3d magazines, I thought I would post some ads for everyone to have a chuckle at. Maybe after work tonight.
I'm also refurbing a 286 class system (basically my first PC). I haven't figured out just yet what I plan on doing with it. Maybe I'll do a "Money for Nothing" remake on period hardware.
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So does "mad science" count or is it more spaceships, robots, aliens
and such?
I'm interested in doing an entry but need to pick something g I can
pull off with the new deadline.
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I'm a little leery of putting my data out in the cloud.
Put it out there. You never know, maybe someone will animate your movies for you.
Yes, technology is scary but resisting it is worse; frustratingly inconvenient.
Ah, but what would the point of that be?
It is slow going right now but I'm trying to change that.
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Yeah, if nothing else it seemed like a nice option for a low-power NAS or server.
They launched their Kickstarter back in October 2012 so I guess it has been close to 2 years.
I would like to pick up the 1000 core version, that looks promising (who knows when that will be out).
Kinda annoyed that I didn't splash out for the 64 core one, it looks like they were able to develop that anyway even though they didn't meet their stretch goal. I didn't see them hitting 3 million in funding and didn't want 2 16 core boards if it fell through.
There was also the whole "backing the little guy" thing, and I'd really love to see what happens if they can eventually build an exascale computer with these. That may be a way down the road, though.
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I shall be eager to hear reports on this. I have no clue about how one makes use of it.
It looks to be very similar to a Raspberry Pi only more powerful. Unfortunately it is not ready-to-run right out of the box, you need some sort of case, 5v power adapter and an HDMI cable (or HDMI to vga adapter).
I would love to build a custom laptop that you could run on 4AA batteries but there are two problems there:
Finding a lower power screen that can be driven by HDMI and that doesn't cost a fortune and is the proper size (say 10-12" diagonally).
Most displays that would go in a laptop or could be scavenged from a busted one require an LVDS adapter (specialized adapter that lets you hook it to the mainboard.
The other problem with the home-made laptop idea is the case. I've only ever seen one case that looked properly crafted.
The other problem with this is buy the time you've built one, you could have bought a used one much cheaper.
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Yeah mine also finally showed up. Has it been two years? I'll have to check my email for the initial "thanks for funding us" email.
It sure did take a long time.
Anyway, I've also got to find a power supply, suitable case and an HDMI cable before I can do anything with it.
You're likely to get it working before I do. Let me know what you think.
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I was thinking of using Dropbox for synching my AM files between more than one machine. I'm a little leery of putting my data out in the cloud. Is there a way to do a localized version? I guess that would be more like using a network share? I'd be interested in knowing how everyone keeps things synched between 2 or more systems.
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I need to experiment with it and make sure I understand it fully before using it. I don't want to start using a feature if I'm not really sure how it is supposed to work.
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I don't want to embed the project files just yet, I'm not really sharing any of my data and I think that will cause me more problems with subversion.
I'm not sure if I follow you here.
Are you saying you already use Subversion?
Maybe I used the wrong term, but I've accidentally embedded things in a project file, gone to edit another model/project and then noticed that all the instances of that model/project have been changed. For my particular workflow, this is not desirable. That may change at some point, but for now I prefer to have stuff not auto-update on me.
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Yeah, after looking through my files I realized that a 3 digit number in addition to the descriptive name may work much better for me ( I don't see myself having more than 999 versions of something, and if I do then I really should be pruning things a bit more often).
I don't want to embed the project files just yet, I'm not really sharing any of my data and I think that will cause me more problems with subversion.
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I don't have a laptop but if there's a way to avoid using the Intel graphics while you are running A:M... definitely do that.
I completely disabled the Optimus feature and the Intel graphics, so I'm going to load the ball bounce project I did a while back and see if that fixed the problem.
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So I decided to dust of my project today and get back to working on it.
The problem is it has been so damn long since I've worked on it, I'm not entirely sure what are my most recent files. I have 3 different backups, I can sort by date and that should at least get me close but I'm not sure if there is other more recent stuff somewhere. I had everything on a 16gb jump drive and just about died because when I went to check it, there were none of my project files on it (forgetting that I'd moved them to a larger portable HD).
I feel like I'm going to spend hours just sorting through everything to make sure I've got the most recent stuff, and I've completely lost all motivation to do any work on it. At this point I'm considering just calling it a day and going to the gym so I will at least get some exercise.
I guess I'm also pretty upset with myself that I've let myself go this long without working on it, the last time I seriously did anything with it was a bit over a year ago.
Any suggestions for managing large numbers of files? I usually have several versions of the same model since I save several times while I am working on it, so I can go back to an earlier version if something gets screwed up. While I can do a date sort, and I try to give myself descriptive names so I know what is going on with a particular file, I'm not sure if I'm doing myself favors keeping all the work in progress stuff around. Maybe I'd be better served figuring out what is current, placing it in a project folder (making at least 3 backups) and then putting everything else in cold storage?
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A while back I discovered a bug with the way my GPU handles displaying animation playback/scrubbing in AM. There is a bit of a lag and/or dropped frames which can make it difficult to tell what is going on.
I'm not sure if this is a problem with the Intel HD graphics, the Nvidia GPU, or the Nvidia Optimus feature which is supposed to switch between the 2 (I'm assuming it may be due to Optimus, but haven't been able to confirm by testing all cases yet).
Currently I've got only the Nvidia discrete GPU enabled and am looking for my project file to scrub through the timeline to see if it is still an issue. Does anyone else with a similar setup on their laptop experience this same problem?
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I actually do have it set to monetize. Although, it's with specific videos. For instance, the Christmas video I did used a karaoke song and *they* get the money from the ads, not me. (ggrrr.)
So, I just checked and for the lifetime of my account (going back to August of 2008 to now) and after 11,390 views, my total estimated earning is $5.00. :-) $4.00 of that was earned by The Wobbling Dead video I have on there. The Paunk Show pilot has made 12 cents, the Stalled Trek trailer 52 cents and the full movie 35 cents. So, just looking at The Wobbling Dead, that's $4 for 4,986 views. And it's taken more than a year to get to that many views. :-)
I believe you have to reach a minimum of $100 or something like that before you can get the money. Which means, that if you spend your whole life doing this and only make $99, you never get a cent. :-)
Since, I would assume that the vast majority of Youtube users never reach that threshold, it's essentially smoke and mirrors. Google keeps it all. :-)
Largento,
I really think you just haven't caught the right eyes. Chris Hardwick does a show called Talking Dead (where they discuss the weekly Walking Dead episode), I think if you could get Wobbling Dead across his desk (couldn't be too hard, the guy has a pretty substantial web presence, among other things he also has a show/podcast called The Nerdist). I just think if you got some type of exposure there it would blow up.
Not sure if I feel better or worse about turning 40 now
in Off Topic
Posted
Stumbled across this on the web today. Apparently this is from an early 60s Montgomery Ward catalog.
I'm a little bummed out about turning 40 this coming fall (I realize it is better than the alternative). I guess this makes me feel better?
I think someone once said (paraphrasing heavily as I don't remember the exact quote)
"old is about 25 years older than whatever your current age is".