A Boolean Blockchain Meditation [video]

Tas_mania · **Joined:** Nov 04, 2015 **Posts:** 1466

I started with a Stephen Sink fractal called 'Spherical Cubes1' from the Mandelbulber Facebook page. I keyframed at 1080p and added a revolving block background. Foreground and background are both 'boolean mode' fractals. Boolean mode makes quite unpredictable fractals I think. I put blockchain in the title because while making this video I swapped motherboards and added a second video card that came from a bitcoin mining computer. Try doing that on a Windows computer? Actually, don't try it at all

lylejk · **Joined:** Sep 24, 2010 **Posts:** 12837

Interesting, Tran. Like the back story too. Thinking about changing out my HD with a solid state drive to give my aging system a new life, but hate the idea of re-installing my OS. I know I could always re-image, but prefer not too since there's more than many special steps to consider when migrating from Magnetic HD to SSD (watched a few videos on this already) that you don't have to do if you just install on the SSD. Oh well. Regardless, I enjoyed the video.

ofnuts · **Joined:** Oct 25, 2010 **Posts:** 4812

Interesting. Makes me wonder: if I'm a point and my path makes me come across a 3D fractal object, am I guaranteed to fall through the cracks or am I guaranteed to hit something or does it depend on some "density"?

PS: A colleague of mine tried to sell me a couple of video cards and a 1000W PSU once. Shattered dreams of getting rich quick....

racer-x · **Joined:** Apr 15, 2017 **Posts:** 1837

Very good. I see a steady improvement with every video you create. You are definitely learning the program and I look forward to seeing your next creation.

Thanks for sharing.

Wallace · **Posted:** Thu May 09, 2019 5:28 pm **(#5)**

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Tas_mania · **Joined:** Nov 04, 2015 **Posts:** 1466

Thanks for the comments guys, hi racer-x.
Here is what I found.
Nvidia made graphics cards specifically for bitcoin miners that use the Linux-based 'ethOS'.

This card has no video connectors at all and is equivalent to a GTX 1060.

Mandelbulber can render on multiple graphics cards using OpenCL - the more GPUs the faster it renders.
Cryptocurrency mining must do something similar. Due to a crash in bitcoin, the cards are on ebay for hundreds of dollars less than equivalent GPUs.

I bought one for $74au to go with a GTX1060. Surprisingly it worked straight off but apparently only on Linux. Windows has 'signed driver enforcement' that stops them working. Of course, gamers wanted to use them as well.

I do all compositing with Gimp using python scripts written by rich2005, ofnuts and trandoductin. Three very talented people! I also use G'MIC and GAP. I found that Gimp is memory dependent so to anyone using it for video compositing, you need a lot of ram. Otherwise Gimp will start using the hard disk which really slows it down.

Wallace · **Posted:** Thu May 09, 2019 9:59 pm **(#7)**

Tas_mania wrote:

Thanks for the comments guys, hi racer-x.
Here is what I found.
Nvidia made graphics cards specifically for bitcoin miners that use the Linux-based 'ethOS'.
[ Image ]
This card has no video connectors at all and is equivalent to a GTX 1060.

Mandelbulber can render on multiple graphics cards using OpenCL - the more GPUs the faster it renders.
Cryptocurrency mining must do something similar. Due to a crash in bitcoin, the cards are on ebay for hundreds of dollars less than equivalent GPUs.

I bought one for $74au to go with a GTX1060. Surprisingly it worked straight off but apparently only on Linux. Windows has 'signed driver enforcement' that stops them working. Of course, gamers wanted to use them as well.

I do all compositing with Gimp using python scripts written by rich2005, ofnuts and trandoductin. Three very talented people! I also use G'MIC and GAP. I found that Gimp is memory dependent so to anyone using it for video compositing, you need a lot of ram. Otherwise Gimp will start using the hard disk which really slows it down.

I remember seeing a workaround for these cards,
but can't remember where I saw it,
or what the workaround was. :oops: