Roger

What sorcery is this? When was this implemented?

Robert --- thank you for conducting the contest and all your hard work putting the video together. Congratulations to the winners!

And one last word about the budget laptops using the low-end dual cores (generally at the sub $300 price point): they tend to be lower power than a dual core system from back in the day. An AMD E-120 was a popular chip to put in budget laptops, but it is a sub 2ghz dual core chip. Other things that they do with these lower end systems to save on costs is they use single channel instead of dual channel RAM, slower 5400rpm hard drives (unless they use flash, in which case they tend to use a lower emmc flash module) and other measures to keep the costs down. If budget is really tight you're better off getting a used higher end system with a discrete chip that won't cause problems with AM, or trying to get a more modern budget system that makes fewer compromises.

I have bad news: virtually every laptop, that isn't advertised as a gaming laptop or workstation/desktop replacement laptop, has Intel graphics. That is how they keep the prices so low. With that in mind, Mark might be best served getting a laptop with a Ryzen 2500u or Ryzen 2700u, those are mobile chips with Vega graphics. They should be quite suitable for mobile AM work, but unfortunately I have never tested these personally.

That was my main concern with the laptop Mark posted, that is a lower-end chip I'm pretty sure. If he doesn't mind going used, he can get an X220 with a 1 year warranty for right around $200, I think this one might even have a tablet mode. Throw in an AM license and he is still under $300. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-Thinkpad-X230-12-5-INTEL-CORE-I5-3230M-2-60GHZ-8GB-128Gb-WINDOWS-10-PRO/222499822453?hash=item33ce05db75:rk:24:pf:0

Yeah but Win 2k is much lighter on system resources than what Win 10 is. Win 2k I think will work with a minimum of 128 to 256mb RAM where Win 10 has a minimum requirement of 2GB. So Win 2k with 2GB is using much less of the total system RAM than a Win 10 system with 2 or 4GB. 2 cores is probably just fine for AM on the go but I'd try for sure to get a minimum of 4gb RAM and either an i3 or i5 dual core. Ideally you would want whatever cpu you get to have a fairly high base clock speed.

The Costco laptop would probably be adequate but just barely. You really wouldn't be able to put much of anything but AM on it, for sure. I would try to get at least 8gb RAM, a quad core Intel or AMD cpu, and a 1080p display panel. If you don't have a full keyboard with numpad, you will want a plug in USB numpad for AM use. I don't know that I would want to try and use a dual core with 4gb, you might be ok with it at first but I think you'd become frustrated over time.

This one has a number pad: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-e-series/ThinkPad-E585/p/20KVCTO1WWENUS0/customize? I'd recommend the Ryzen 2500U, 1080p screen and 8GB RAM as a bare minimum. That config comes in at just a hair over $500, at $529. It has a 65W power adapter which is much smaller and lighter than a desktop replacement laptop power brick would be.

This question came up in Live Answer Time today and I thought I would post the official word from Hash (link is to store page): Can A:M use multiple cores? A:M is currently not fully multi-core-optimized. However A:M is able through Netrender (included for free in v16.0 and up) to use multiple cores for rendering.  OpenMP is used to utilize multiple cores for several operations. More operations are altered to use multiple cores in each update.  Since A:M is a rendering application, it is recommended to use a CPU as fast as possible to decrease rendering time. So if you have an 8 core system, base AM may not make full use of all 8 cores however if you pick up an additional 4 or 10 netrender nodes for the nominal cost of $10 or $15, you can utilize the other cores as background render nodes. So those of you contemplating Threadripper/Ryzen/Ryzen 3000 updates may find this useful info. *EDIT: I should add, most programs are not fully massively-threaded aware yet. I expect that to change over time, but for right now Netrender is the best way to make use of those extra cores.

That's a different look, to be sure.

For AM use you're probably better off not spending on the Titan, it just wouldn't make use of it. Other apps that use CUDA might, but unless you use a lot of CUDA enabled apps and it's not just a hobby but something you use to pay your rent, it probably doesn't make sense to spend that kind of money.

I can't remember if I posted this before but this spoof is obviously referencing 2001: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeQi4zbT8fA It's called Black Holes (warning: brief animated nudity ). Apparently it is a pilot for a series but I've yet to see anything further by these guys using the same concept.

2001 had some very groundbreaking effects for the time, stuff that had never been seen before. I found some information on on how various effects were done as well as behind-the-scenes information that was pretty interesting: https://indiefilmhustle.com/stanley-kubrick-slit-scan-2001/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgNyCluIRhA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StZ2fmWYom4 There's a lot of good stuff if you're interested in how they made the film.

Having seen AC/DC more than once, I have to say they put on one of the best hard rock shows around. I saw them once in Milwaukee in '09 and twice again more recently I think it was 2013 and 2016 I saw them, both times in Chicago. I'd have gone to see them back in highschool but just couldn't swing it at the time. Anyway, we are likely to only get tribute bands as Brian Johnson is retiring due to too much hearing damage, and Angus' brother Malcolm passed away recently. I had heard something about them finishing out some tour dates with Axl Rose singing and someone else subbing in for Malcolm, but I don't know what their long term plans are. My guess is they are either going to hang things up or it is entirely possible they are going to keep going until Angus drops dead, just with a different rhythm guitarist and singer. On a slightly different note, there is an AC/DC tribute band that does bluegrass renditions of their songs called Hayseed Dixie. While I've never seen them I have heard one or two of their songs and it's definitely an interesting spin on your typical tribute band. I don't know what Angus does to have that level of energy in his 60s, tons of cardio maybe?

Very nice.

That looks like an advanced case of Bone-itis.

I'd be down for it. I've done some of these already but I can always use the practice.

This looks pretty cool, I can't watch the videos though unless I watch them directly on YouTube. Anyone else having that problem?

This is true, I am also the limiting factor in terms of getting things done more so than rendering. I don't know that having extremely fast final renders would make much difference in that regard. However, where they might make a difference is in all the iterative test renderings that we often do when testing lighting, materials, etc. on a scene. Now 5-10 seconds as opposed to 5 minutes for a test frame would be a valuable thing. We can work around this somewhat by doing lower resolution tests or rendering only a portion of the screen but sometimes you need a full frame test at final quality. Blender and AM are very different in the way in which they are developed. Blender is a community effort with dozens if not hundreds of programmers. This is not true of AM. I am happy enough with AM, I am not investing more time at this point in my life in learning a completely different software. I suppose if I had to at some point and was forced to adopt Blender I would but I'd much rather work with AM.

It depends, of course, but in average 3-5 minutes for a 1280x640 9xmultipass frame without hair/particles. You should get in a time machine and go tell 1987 me that the day would come when it would not take 5-15 hours per 320x240 frame with no hair or particles even if you wanted them. True, I remember trying to do single-frame Povray renders on my 286 and them taking all night since I didn't have a math coprocessor. That said, if you could do those renders faster, why not? It would be terribly useful to be able to do a final quality render in near real-time.

Just saw this today, I really don't want to run the risk of spoiling anything so all I will say is it was a very strong film. And porgs are adorable.

Yeah, makes more sense. I guess it has been a while since the last contest, forgot what the other one looked like.

Looks good so far. What about the reverse side, you could have Tom/Thom in a hammock.

Nicely done video, Rob. Congratulations to Mark, Matt, and Bruce. Mark I will be sending you a photo for my caricature prize. Maybe I could have you do one of my fuzzy dog.

I got a Chick Tract once.