I was wondering if the Boinc screensaver could be changed, because now it looks like nothing.

We could replace it by the burp logo, or a blender made picture slideshow, or a blender made screensaver.
I'm working on a screensaver, I've made a burp cookie, i try to keep it as low poly as possible

http://www.mentalwarp.com/~fred/divers/BurpCookie.jpg
the blend file :
http://www.mentalwarp.com/~fred/divers/BurpCookie.blend

I don't know if it will alter the rendering performances. If it is opengl, it should only use the 3D card ? (stop me if i'm wrong)

It is not a vital feature but it would improve the look and feel of burp :)

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a yafray rendering of the cookie :)
could be used in some logo / slideshow / something.
http://www.mentalwarp.com/~fred/divers/burp.jpg
this is quickly made at school, i will try to make it better at home :)

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Actually the screensaver is an area that I don't know much about. Currently it simply uses a boring default thing - but potentially it could be a fullblown 3D presentation of how BURP works, a slideshow with selected nice images, funky looking graphics, actually almost everything.
BOINC has built-in support for OpenGL calls so I think we could combine all of the above to one thing. But I lack the knowledge about OpenGL programming...

So what we are really looking for is someone with experience in OpenGL programming and someone with a bit of graphical taste to accompany him =)

Actually getting the images (for the slideshow etc.) from the server to the client already has been tested and works fine.

Personally I'm not going to focus on this untill most of the other things are working, but if anyone are interested - please feel free to start! (and I will comment on your progress from time to time)

Well i'm not an opengl guy or so, more like a php coder :)

But wouldn't it be nice to see in realtime what you are rendering and take that as the boinc graphics, i mean not as real screensaver but when you right click your workunit and then show graphics.

I think lots of people would then be more attrackted?

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> Well i'm not an opengl guy or so, more like a php coder :)
>
> But wouldn't it be nice to see in realtime what you are rendering and take
> that as the boinc graphics, i mean not as real screensaver but when you right
> click your workunit and then show graphics.
>
> I think lots of people would then be more attrackted?
>
I have been wanting to see a project like this just so I could really see what my computer is doing.

The simplest idea I have (no real idea how to do it though) is using checkpoints. Read the checkpoint file and display the image on the screen. This assumes the checkpoint would be done fairly frequently and the overhead in making it displayable is less than getting the image some other way. (I'd have to change my checkpoint setting though, currently 300 to 600 seconds).

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BOINC WIKI

BOINCing since 2002/12/8

It seems to be very difficult to get the rendered data out of the renderer before the entire frame (or part) has been done.

Instead it could be an idea to make the screensaver into an exhibition area where winners of competitions can get their art shown to the public.
The screensaver could then be made to fade between the top 10 stills of the month.

> Instead it could be an idea to make the screensaver into an exhibition area
> where winners of competitions can get their art shown to the public.
> The screensaver could then be made to fade between the top 10 stills of the
> month.

Personally i´m not really waiting for a screensaver,..
If it absolutely has to be there, only because
the eye also wanna have something to do !
Then this doesn´t sound bad @ all.

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I have another possible idea for a screensaver: Save the completed results on the host and then cycle through them for a screensaver.

This would take some time to get a decent number of stills to make the screensaver interesting, but it would show the work you had actually done on that machine. Assumeing the filenames reflect the order that the stills would go to make the finished animation displaying them in order could even give an appoximation of the finished project. It would also save the bandwith issues that may crop up if using a 'best of' type thing.

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BOINC WIKI

BOINCing since 2002/12/8

<blockquote>I have another possible idea for a screensaver: Save the completed results on the host and then cycle through them for a screensaver.
</blockquote>

This idea sounds good to me, too! If the images are fairly small jpgs, then this won't use a lot of discspace anyway...

Greetings,
CC

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<img src="http://www.boincstats.com/stats/banner.php?cpid=95ef1305806d9b867f1f28e110dbbfe5">

Or maybe you could do something general and let people decide what they want...

Idea:
You could have a "screensaver.zip" that contains all the jpgs that the slideshow uses. Then it would just be a matter of changing the contents of the zip file to change the slideshow.

You could post different pre-made zips on the website for things like top 10 rated pics, winners of contests etc. But the default zip could be created using the frames that you've rendered (up to a maximum # of frames to control the size).

The zip file would be used as a container than as a mechanism to save space since jpg doesn't compress much.

www.electricsheep.org XD

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I also like to have a screensaver woh shows the renderd frames in realtime. Eventually it\'s possible to cut out the realtime-renderer frpm the original programm... The renderer of Blender works in reltime so that\'s a possibility!

I also like to have a screensaver woh shows the renderd frames in realtime. Eventually it\'s possible to cut out the realtime-renderer frpm the original programm... The renderer of Blender works in reltime so that\'s a possibility!

Is there a way for blender to show what its doing when in commandline mode?

About realtime showing, what is current work... IMHO thats few pixels doesnt tell anything to watcher. Probably some showcase will be beter. And posibly the rendered parts, buth I dont think, that they will be interesting... (1 part of 64 from 800x600....)

PS: I know opengl, buth my school giving me to much work... an also Iam working. But I try to make 2 days free to burp opengl basic code in next few months. But dont rely on me. Iam vague/searchless/unfathomable.

About realtime showing, what is current work... IMHO thats few pixels doesnt tell anything to watcher. Probably some showcase will be beter. And posibly the rendered parts, buth I dont think, that they will be interesting... (1 part of 64 from 800x600....)

PS: I know opengl, buth my school giving me to much work... an also Iam working. But I try to make 2 days free to burp opengl basic code in next few months. But dont rely on me. Iam vague/searchless/unfathomable.

It\'s also worth noting that the folks at Berkeley are in the process of completely rewriting the Graphics API.

It will come into play in the version 6 release of the core client, which is tentatively scheduled to be released this fall (see the road map on Trac).

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Kathryn :o)
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Also, aren\'t some of the work units only portions of a frame? That wouldn\'t be very interesting to look at. But, it would be nice to have something more than \"BURP Status: xx.x%\".

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that the folks at Berkeley are in the process of completely rewriting the Graphics API.

It will come into play in the version 6 release of the core client, which is tentatively scheduled to be released this fall (see the road map on Trac).

Thanks for note. I\'ll look at actual infos also before starting to write something.

I wouldn\'t want to work on it before BOINC milestone 6, but I\'d think it would be possible to have the screen saver produce an OpenGL render of the frame that Blender is currently rendering. The geometry and everything should already be availalbe, and as long as the complexity of the OpenGL preview is limited, the system shouldn\'t be overly burdened. Some sessions, like number 650 would be worthless without ray-tracing, but maybe adding some goodies like scene statistics, a box around \"your\" section, wireframe overlays, or even WASD scene flythroughs ;-) would make up for the limitations of OpenGL.

Unrelated idea: Could the interface used by CATS be adapted to grab the latest completed frame to use as a screensaver?

I like Pconfig\'s idea, but it should be pre-rendered. That way the screensaver wouldn\'t take too many of the system resources.

[...] But I lack the knowledge about OpenGL programming...

...Nothing which a couple of years of programming courses couldn\'t cure. Hopefully we will see the first screensaver at some point before the end of this year.