Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

skottish · 2007-10-11 03:11:56

I'm showing a slight performance increase with Blender using the vanilla 2.6.23 kernel over the 2.6.22-ck kernel (which was slightly faster than 2.6.22 vanilla). I used two of the most common benchmarks with threads set to two to match my processor:

http://www.eofw.org/bench/
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthr … =benchmark

In both cases I'm showing a roughly 1.5 second improvement in render times. The first test was averaging around 1:04.60, and it's now down to 1:02.96. The second test was averaging around 0:55.53 and now is down to 0:53.04. Of course I'd have to do tons of renders with more complete tests to show how much of an improvement, but it is definitely promising.

Fackamato · 2007-10-12 08:51:24

Great! Did you just do a make oldconfig with the Archlinux config, or is 2.6.23 in the repos? Or is there a PKGBUILD

klixon · 2007-10-12 10:01:43

How is the interactivity whilst doing those benchmarks?
Are you still able to work reasonably well?
Audio stuttering, etc?

lumiwa · 2007-10-12 11:28:10

Blender 2.45 (32 bits) is out and maybe works better?

skottish · 2007-10-12 12:15:02

Fackamato wrote:

Great! Did you just do a make oldconfig with the Archlinux config, or is 2.6.23 in the repos? Or is there a PKGBUILD

It's in testing. I simply installed it, the proper nVidia driver, and the few supporting packages.

klixon wrote:

How is the interactivity whilst doing those benchmarks?
Are you still able to work reasonably well?
Audio stuttering, etc?

During the benchmarks I left the system alone. It's easy to do when your test files render in a minute! I'm probably not the best person to ask this kind of question because I do my artwork in silence with the absolute minimum of applications running.

lumiwa wrote:

Blender 2.45 (32 bits) is out and maybe works better?

I've been using 2.45 on x86_64 since the day it came out, built with the Arch package from ABS. I only changed the pkgver and md5sum lines. It's been running great, but then again, I had no problems with 2.44 either with mrunion's subversion builds.

Jacek Poplawski · 2007-10-13 12:10:44

Is there any way to convince TU to update Blender version in [extra]?

tardo · 2007-10-13 15:53:27

TUs dont have access to extra. Contact the dev for that.

skottish · 2007-10-13 18:45:02

I tried to convince mrunion to adopt the official Blender package. Don't know if that's going to happen though.

mrunion · 2007-10-14 01:22:18

I'll see what I can do....

mrunion · 2007-10-14 01:55:58

OK, here's the stuff I use for building blender. It's a "package" that contains the PKGBUILD and other stuff I'd upload to AUR if I were to do that. Keep in mind that as of just after the 2.45 release, ffmpeg was rolled into Blender. I had to download the ffmpeg-svn package and compile it with a custom option added to the PKGBUILD (the option was "--enable-swscaler"). Attached is a COPY of my modified PKGBUILD for ffmpeg-svn and a link to the Blender package I use to always build the latest and greatest from Blender's SVN. does this help you guys out?

My Blender package: http://www.bigpony.com/aurpkgs/blender-svn.tar.gz

My modified ffmpeg-svn PKGBUILD:

# Contributor: niQo

pkgname=ffmpeg-svn
pkgver=10595
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="FFMpeg is a complete and free Internet live audio and video broadcasting solution for Linux/Unix"
depends=('lame' 'sdl' 'libvorbis' 'a52dec' 'faad2' 'faac' 'xvidcore' 'zlib' 'imlib2')
makedepends=('subversion')
arch=(i686 x86_64)
conflicts=('ffmpeg')
provides=('ffmpeg')
replaces=('ffmpeg-cvs')
url="http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/"
license="GPL"
source=()
md5sums=()

_svntrunk=svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg/trunk
_svnmod=ffmpeg

build() {
    cd $startdir/src
    svn co $_svntrunk/ $_svnmod --config-dir ./ -r $pkgver
    #svn co $_svntrunk/ $_svnmod --config-dir ./

        cp -r $_svnmod/* $_svnmod-build
    cd $_svnmod-build

     ./configure \
          --prefix=/usr \
          --enable-gpl \
      --enable-libmp3lame \
          --enable-libogg \
          --enable-libvorbis \
          --enable-libfaac \
          --enable-libfaad \
          --enable-liba52 \
          --enable-libxvid \
      --enable-pp \
          --enable-shared \
          --enable-pthreads \
          --enable-swscaler
     make -j 2 || return 1 

     mkdir -p $startdir/pkg/usr/{bin,include,lib} || return 1
     make DESTDIR=$startdir/pkg install || return 1

}

Last edited by mrunion (2007-10-14 01:56:51)

skottish · 2007-10-14 02:06:44

I believe that -swscaler was added to the FFMPEG version in testing. Be forwarned though: unless the Arch devs found a patch that I didn't know about, swscaler will break VLC < 9.0.

mrunion · 2007-10-14 02:09:24

I have VLC 0.8.6c and haven't noticed any breakage. That doesn't mean I've "tested" everything, but it seems fine so far. What breaks? Maybe I can test that?

Last edited by mrunion (2007-10-14 02:09:56)

markc · 2007-10-14 03:54:13

FWIW the ffmpeg build also affects kdenlive-svn so I've resorted to using the kdenlive_builder.sh script which builds and installs a separate self contained version of kdenlive, mlt and ffmpeg. The ffmpeg PKGBUILD above is missing a few compile options like --enable-x11grab and I notice the latest testing includes --enable-swscaler so hopefully we won't have to have multiple copies of ffmpeg for blender, vlc and kdenlive. Is this going to work with blender and vlc ? testing/ffmpeg 20071009-1...

configuration: --prefix=/usr --enable-gpl --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libogg \
 --enable-libvorbis --enable-pp --enable-libfaac --enable-libfaad --enable-liba52 \
 --enable-libxvid --enable-libx264 --enable-libtheora --disable-libamr-nb --enable-pp \
 --enable-shared --enable-pthreads --enable-x11grab --enable-swscaler

mrunion · 2007-10-14 04:21:25

Well, I don't know exactly. I rebuilt ffmpeg with the additional config stuff you had that I didn't and all still seemed well with blender at least.

skottish · 2007-10-14 08:55:35

mrunion wrote:

I have VLC 0.8.6c and haven't noticed any breakage. That doesn't mean I've "tested" everything, but it seems fine so far. What breaks? Maybe I can test that?

Hopefully that means that there is a patch somewhere and the Arch devs grabbed it. Search for "vlc swscaler" and you'll see what I meant.

Last edited by skottish (2007-10-14 08:56:45)

mrunion · 2007-10-14 12:34:23

@skottish: Yup! I just didn;t test enough. I was only looking for a "crash" and VLC didn't crash playing mp3s. I don't see any video with it, though. I'll wait until next week before upgrading though, since they are suppose to have things fixed AND I can use another player for now.

skottish · 2007-10-14 15:05:34

Without trying to detract too much from this thread, swscaler in FFMPEG is becoming something that a lot of people need. As markc pointed out, Kdenlive won't even run without it. VLC from subversion works fine with swscaler, but it's only around 95% complete.

Jacek Poplawski · 2007-10-22 11:30:28

mrunion any progress?

mrunion · 2007-10-22 13:02:37

Nope, none since the last update. Blender works just fine in it's latest builds but it seems VLC doesn't "like" video now. I just use mplayer or totem or something else. I still like VLC but will work around it to keep Blender updated.

If there's something in particular you'd like me to try and test I will see what I can do. Just keep in mind that while I'm a software developer, all that experience is on the M$ platform. I'm just learning this Linux stuff. I decided a few months agi that I'd had enough M$ stuff and now my full-time job is working for a place being their sys admin, DBA and web developer -- all while using Linux.

Jacek Poplawski · 2007-10-23 09:57:12

The progress I mean is update of Blender 2.44 to Blender 2.45 in [extra].

mrunion · 2007-10-23 14:32:01

Oh. I don't work with that. Someone else (I don't know who) maintains the package "officially". I just supplied the custom PKGBUILD I used up in post 10. How does one go about becoming the "maintainer" of the package in EXTRA?

Skottish mentioned trying to "convince" me to be the maintainer, but I honestly don't remember that conversation. Anyway, if you are anyone could give me the info on what I need to do, etc., I'll look into it.

skottish · 2007-10-23 14:59:18

mrunion wrote:

Skottish mentioned trying to "convince" me to be the maintainer, but I honestly don't remember that conversation. Anyway, if you are anyone could give me the info on what I need to do, etc., I'll look into it.

It was just more of a remark over at Blender Artists. I do think that you would be a great maintainer for the package. You actually use the software for one. And your PKGBUILD are very high quality.

mrunion · 2007-10-23 19:51:13

I musta missed that over there. But, hey, if it's something I can do and it doesn't cause me to lose my day job with the time required, I'd consider it.

Jacek Poplawski · 2007-10-23 20:59:27

Please just do something to make Blender package more current than it is now. I don't understand what is so big deal here, just update the PKGBUILD. Maybe Blender is not so popular in Arch community?

Navi_ · 2007-10-24 07:41:15

Nice, a few seconds faster.

Sarcasm aside, to me, it doesn't really matter if I can tell the difference when the two are compared side-to-side, it matters if I can tell just by itself.

Arch Linux

#1 2007-10-11 03:11:56

Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#2 2007-10-12 08:51:24

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#3 2007-10-12 10:01:43

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#4 2007-10-12 11:28:10

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#5 2007-10-12 12:15:02

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#6 2007-10-13 12:10:44

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#7 2007-10-13 15:53:27

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#8 2007-10-13 18:45:02

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#9 2007-10-14 01:22:18

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#10 2007-10-14 01:55:58

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#11 2007-10-14 02:06:44

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#12 2007-10-14 02:09:24

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#13 2007-10-14 03:54:13

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#14 2007-10-14 04:21:25

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#15 2007-10-14 08:55:35

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#16 2007-10-14 12:34:23

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#17 2007-10-14 15:05:34

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#18 2007-10-22 11:30:28

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#19 2007-10-22 13:02:37

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#20 2007-10-23 09:57:12

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#21 2007-10-23 14:32:01

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#22 2007-10-23 14:59:18

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#23 2007-10-23 19:51:13

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#24 2007-10-23 20:59:27

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

#25 2007-10-24 07:41:15

Re: Blender renders slightly faster with 2.6.23 kernel

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