Blender Boot...

I tried it for the first time today and i'm loving it...

Its a Linux build optimized for blender.

found here: [url=[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]][You must be registered and logged in to see this link.][/url]

On my ocean sim that i tried it reduced render time from 1:45.59 to 50.88 per frame on my test render, on the same machine.

I had also had a problem of not being able to render my gui screen, which was very, very inconvenient when i try to work on character animation and lip syncing, i was having to fully render out the sequence to test it, which took way too long, but that now works beautifully.

I've just scratched the surface, but I'm definitely loving it.

just did another test using the test.blend from blender benchmark

time in windows 2.25.89

time with Blender-Boot 1.15.51

That sounds like a hell of a performance increase

But can you access your usual statr blend and your windows file system or is it self contained?

nope, you can access all your files...i'm pretty sure...i have most of my .blends on a thumbdrive, and i can access those. it also comes with dropbox, which is cool too

Cool.

Are you running this on a dedicated computer or in a virtual machine? I'm just wondering if I can get faster renders in a virtual machine this way. I have to keep my one machine in Windoze for my other work.

Rob

i was running my computer as a dual boot....until i messed it up...my own fault. and i've been so busy i haven't yet got a chance to straighten it out.


you can run it as a live boot off of a DVD to give it a try without installing

Hmmmm... sounds tempting.

Hi I am the creator of Blender-boot, just stumbled across this site when doing some Google searching. Always happy to take any feedback, questions, suggestions etc. I will add this thread as one to check so lets see what you have to say (I think I know zyzzy from Blender Underground)

Edit: forgot to mention Blender-boot 2 alpha 2 will be out July 11th 2012

Thanks for registering here Jon! This site was set up as a sort of replacement for the BlenderNewbies forum which has fallen to spam in its owner's absence due to illness.
We're just a small group of the most active members from BN, but nevertheless, we're happy to see you join us.

@Radialronnie thanks for the welcome and its a shame about BN

I'm going to give it a try in a virtual machine to see if there is any real difference. And also to learn more about running a virtual machine. Has anyone tried it in a virtual machine?

Rob

@RobCole thanks for your interest any feedback, suggestions, requests and questions etc either post theme here or contact me on the Blender-boot site. I have ran it many times on virtual machines and it works fine, though I am bound to say that being biased and all, I am not the kind of guy that would tell you it will work fine if it wont. If you need any help with running it anyway let me know, I have lots of experience with virtual machines as well if you run into problems there. Anyway I am always around to help where I can.

I downloaded Blender_Boot (it took over 4 hours to download) and set it up in a Virtual Machine today. I can't seem to get it to work. It asks for Login, I enter "live" as per the tutorial on Blenderboot.com but after hitting Enter, I get a couple of seconds of the screen showing random colored pixels and then back to the login screen.

I'm not sure how to get this to work. I will keep trying, but could use some suggestions.

Rob

p.s. I tried checking the forums on Blenderboot.com, but they are filled with spam.

Hi I am sorry about both things that your having troubles and that the Blender-boot forum has so much spam. Can you tell me which version of Blender-boot you downloaded, what software are you running the virtual machine on and as much as you can about the settings you used please. As for the forum it's broken it is supposed to notify me about every post but it's not, then I seem to get 2 to 3 bots sign up every so often that post 100s of spam posts, I will delete all the new spam and I am going to put some time in to changing the posting settings as soon as I have finished the latest release as it's late, sorry again.

Okay, it's been a busy few days, but here is the information about my system.

I have Windows 7 64 bit Home Premium running on a Dell XPS 8300 (Intel Core i7-2600 @ 3.4GHz, 8GB ram, AMD Radeon HD6700). I'm running VMWare player 4.04 with 2GB ram allocated to the VM and 4 processors. This works well when running Ubuntu itself.

I downloaded Blender-boot2alpha1.iso.

Anything else that you need to know?

Rob

Hi again Rob no that is all I need to know thanks (all though I do recommend virtualbox over vmware but that is your choice) I think I may know what your problem is, as its an alpha there is bound to be bugs, one of these bugs I noticed and put in the release notes. "you need to click the white circle when you login and choose the xfce session, otherwise there will be a never ending login loop"
Hope this fixes the problem if it doesn't please let me know, I will always do all I can to help, really looking forward to your feedback.

Jon

Okay, that IS bringing up the blender screen inside the VM. I still only see the 3D manipulator widgit and the little square at the center. Nothing else visible (even tried zooming out a bunch).

I'm going to play with it as I get time. I could not look for Additional Drivers either. That just brought up an "Unable to execute command" error. I will keep trying things. But right now, it's Blender in Windows for some work.

Rob

@Rob sorry to hear your still having troubles I will run some tests on Blender-boot 2 alpha 1 to see what could be causing the problems. I really suggest using Blender-boot 1 for now though as alpha 1 is the earliest testing version of Blender-boot 2, meaning its bound to have lots of bugs thats what alpha versions are for sorry. On August 11th I will beI releasing Blender-boot 2 beta 1 (as alpha 2 got canceled due to lack of bug reporting before its release) Beta 1 will be a lot more stable than alpha 1, in fact I am using beta 1 right now while I am typing this. So at this point it is just bug fixing and polishing giving me lots of time to get it ready and as good as I can for a beta. So I suggest either use Blender-boot 1 which is stable or wait for Blender-boot 2 beta 1, sorry again I will say again though that alpha releases are bound to have lots of bugs and please bare in mind I am a one man team I am putting a lot of my spare time in to this. I really hope this bad experience will not put you off giving Blender-boot a proper go.

Before I begin if swomeone wishes to take over the project email me at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and I will help you get a good start in bringing Blender-boot back to life. Blender-boot 2 was coming together very nicely until the cheleb svn Blender PPA went down (check the bottom of this post for a PPA that updates Blender once a week, best there is for now), I have tried finding a way to set up a Blender-boot PPA but I cant justify the time it would take to run it and also I have lost passion in the project for the reasons below.
- I am disabled so I need to work on projects that will earn me money, as I dont want to live on benefits.
- Blender-boot was completely advertising free website and the distro itself (most distros make money from things like Google custom search)
- There was not a single donation to Blender-boot in its lifetime.
- I had next to no feedback or bug reports to go by, a couple of awesome people helped and I thank them.
- I made the project open from the start and no one volunteered to help with th building of the distro. Again a couple of people helped with art and the website/forum
- The distro was way too niche for most and was not really going to get anywhere without everything listed above
Sorry guys I thought I could carry on doing this just to help fellow Blender fans, I am sorry that it became too much work with little to no reward.

PPA that updates Blender once a week
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:irie/blender
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
Thankyou to everyone that was involved in this project in anyway, even if it was just using it that still meant a lot to me