Category Archives: News

News, Updates

FA4 version 4.20 released

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Changes:.

  1. Metal rendering support for Intel Iris and Intel HD GPUs on OS X El Capitan.
  2. Metal rendering does not work for all fractals.
  3. Metal rendering not supported for AMD and Nvidia GPUs at this time.
  4. Added Gpu Compatibility Report to GPU Trial Window
  5. Removed color matching code not compatible with OS X El Capitan
  6. Removed color out-of-gamut check and soft proofing from Preview window not compatible with OS X El Capitan
  7. GPU Trial window now has Enforce Quarantine checkbox.
    Turning it off allows you to do trial renders on quarantined GPUs.
    Alert shown when you turn off the quarantine.

Metal rendering can cause GPU hangs for certain fractals (about 10% of them). GPU hangs cause your Mac to freeze for about 10 seconds (while the GPU restarts).

Normally, we would not have released this enhancement with the potential GPU hang issue, EXCEPT that on Intel GPUs the render speed performance is really good.

For those of you on Macbook Airs, we are getting 9 to 12X faster renders. You will experience GPU hangs with some fractals, but you always have the option of rendering those on the CPU — slower but robust.

Because of this GPU hang issue, Metal rendering is ONLY used in the app where you render a single fractal at a time – Preview window, Render to file, Quicklook.

Note: Intel HD 4000 (an older GPU) Metal rendering does not work on El Captitan 10.11, but it does work on 10.11.1 Beta. Its a slow GPU, so the performance is only 40% faster than on CPU.

News, Updates

Metal Rendering On OS X El Capitan

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Version 4.2.0 of Fractal Architect 4 adds GPU rendering support for Metal on OS X El Capitan.

Lets be honest about the state of Metal Compute on Mac OS X in the initial release of El Capitan OS X. There are a lot of critical issues on all of the GPU platforms, AMD, Nvidia, and Intel. Only the Intel platform is stable enough to support this app’s flame fractal rendering algorithm. But it has significant issues too.

Render Performance using Metal on OS X El Capitan GM

(Mips is Millions of Iterations per Second an internal app measure, that is directly related to render performance)

2013 Macbook Air using Intel HD 5000 GPU

CPU: 10.01 Mips
GPU: 87.60 Mips     8.75X faster than  using  CPU

2015 Macbook Pro with Intel Iris Pro

CPU:  25.68 Mips
GPU: 124.09 Mips   3.42X faster than using CPU

The 2015 Macbook Pro also has a AMD Radeon R9 M370X GPU. Here are the rendering speeds for it on OpenCL:

Yosemite 10.10.5      AMD GPU:        157.83 Mips
El Capitan 10.11 GM   AMD GPU:          87.92 Mips

Note that the OpenCL driver performance went down 45% from Yosemite to El Capitan – NOT good!

Important Note: We are experiencing GPU hangs with some fractals  using Metal Compute.  GPU Hangs are the bomb. Entire Mac acts like it has frozen for about 10 secs until GPU resets. This behavior is unique to Metal Compute.

Metal Compute Stability seen in testing

GPU Family Test Results
Intel Iris Pro GOOD:
+ Intel HD 5000   Performance 9 to 12X faster than CPU
BAD:
  GPU Hangs on about 10% of fractals
  OpenCL drivers have no problems with this
Intel HD 4000 BAD: Very slow kernel compiles
GOOD: Performance 1.4X faster than CPU
AMD BAD: Kernel compile failure at 2 min 20 secs
Nvidia 650M GOOD: Kernel compiles in 5 secs
BAD: Garbage Output
News, Updates

FA 4 4.0.3 release submitted to Apple

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A new update release of FA 4 is on the way.

  1. Fixed camera rotation animation
  2. Updated Intel GPU quarantine for new Mac models
  3. Made random generator’s garbage filter settings less confusing
  4. Random generator now has Reset Settings to Defaults button
  5. Random generator now has limit of 200 random fractal retries
  6. Animation configurator’s video preview popover stays open now
  7. Changing Sequencer segments’ offset an/or duration now works correctly
  8. GPU Trial window now always reports performance multiple as GPU Mips/ CPU Mips
  9. Render State window now reports the Initial Mips performance (so you don’t have to go to the Render Status Log to find it)
News, Updates

FA 4 Version 4.02 Released

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Release Notes ===============

Bug Fix: for Loop/Morph Basic Animations being classified as Complex animations
Bug Fix: for Gallery fractals not rendering
Bug Fix: for final assembly of movie failing with sandbox exception
Bug Fix: for Quicktime Player not opening after movie rendered
Bug Fix: for Make Video not working with either variation weights or variation parameters

News, Support

Rendering FA 4 fractals on FA 3D

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In case you already have FA 3D (the previous FA app version), this news might be of interest.
The last update to FA 3D included an update to read files created in FA 4.
The renderer in FA 3D does not support the new features in FA 4, so if a fractal built with FA 4 uses either Pre or Post variation groups, it can’t be rendered in FA 3D.
If the fractal uses just a single Normal variation group per transform in all transforms, it can be rendered in FA 3D. Its a little confusing to understand, but all Flam3/Apophysis fractals have a single variation group per transform. (They do not use this terminology).
Apophysis pre/post variation types (as distinct from Pre/Post variation groups), can be rendered in FA 3D.

How To Tell if  a Fractal uses the New Features in FA 4

Open the Info window on the fractal,  Look at each transform and their variations.

Note in this example, transform #1 uses a Pre and a Normal Variation Group:

Xform #1 weight: 0.9634 colorIndex: 0.0536 color_speed: 0.785 opacity: 100% var_color: 1 rotates: YES
Variation Group Pre#1 ========
 npolar #1: -0.6421 parity: 0.1687 n: -1.5161 
 post_flatten #1: 1.384 
Variation Group Normal ========
 julia #1: 0.3463 
 post_flatten #1: -0.1504

This transform has a single normal variation group.

Xform #2 weight: 0.5347 colorIndex: 0.0615 color_speed: 0.5 opacity: 100% var_color: 1 rotates: YES
Variation Group Normal ========
 julian #1: 0.7325 power: 6 dist: -0.1098
News, Updates

FA 4 – Animation – What’s New

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A Fractal Animation Product Is Born

  • Fastest Integrated Production Flame Fractal Renderer Available Today
    • Multiple GPU Rendering for Mac Pro’s
    • OpenCL rendering on either GPUs (if available and compatible) or CPU
  • Render to Video with Pause/Resume Render
    • Quit App & Resume Render later where you stopped at before
    • Savable Movie Rendering State
  • Audio Integration
  • Virtually every parameter is animatable

Continue reading FA 4 – Animation – What’s New →

News, Updates

FA 3D version 3.2.2 Release Notes

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This version has been released by Apple.

 

Changes for Version 3.2.2 (Video Animator)

This release fixes compatibility issues that affects certain Macs having multiple GPUs.

Added support for Multiple GPU rendering (usable only on Mac Pros).

Improvements:

1)  You can now use multiple render devices together for rendering.

Advice: Don’t select both CPU and GPU for rendering at the same time. It is substantially slower than using the GPU alone.

On the 2013 Mac Pros, select both GPUs, but not the CPU for rendering.  This will  give you roughly twice the render speed compared to using a single GPU.

2) Added “Force OpenCL program rebuild” as OpenCL troubleshooting tool to Render device selector and Preferences

3) Added Sampling Level statistics to render logs and Render State window

  • Sampling level is a base 2 logarithm of the mean histogram hits per pixel

  • Some feel this is a better way to measure render progress

4) Added changes to KeyFrame window to allow duplicate keyframes

  • can drag fractal from keyframes window and drop on Preview window to append duplicate keyframe

  • can drag and drop a keyframe in keyframes window to create duplicate

  • can edit the duplicated keyframes in Triangle editor and change them – useful for keyframe animation

5) Rendering progress dialogs are no longer auto-hidden when you switch to another app

Bug Fixes ====================

1) Fix for render device selection not working correctly on some multiple GPU Macs

2) Fix for Triangle Editor changes made to a specific keyframe that are not showing up in frames window and not being properly saved