This is my first post of a build, so let me know if I need to do something different. If you manage to get it running on your 64-bit machine, please let me know.
:drool:
I guess it's time I upgrade again. Is there a substantial increase in rendering speed going 64 bit? I know there will be some increase, but is it a bigger difference than a 32 bit machine running at the same clock speed?
Blender or any ray tracing software should not significantly benefit from the move to a 64-bit platform. This is because the advantage of a 64-bit architecture comes in only two areas:
* Natively addressing over 4GB of memory, which is not possible with a 32-bit system
* >32-bit integer mathematics
Since Blender is a floating point loving application, and not heavy on the integer math, there really is not a pressing reason to move to a 64-bit OS.
(Applications that will benefit from a 64-bit platform include very large databases and a/v encoding and compression, or so I understand.)
Yes, I built with scons. I did have to do some SConstruct tweaking to get it to compile, and more radically, a symbolic link for the GL library stuff. At this very moment I can't tell you what I did because the machine is being rebuilt with a new disk subsystem and FC2 (or FC3 if I can wait.)
If I were a betting man, my money would be on the GL library stuff because that is dynamically linked. Specifically, the compile was searching for a file (something like GLU.*foo.*so.1) and I could not get it to see the GLU.*bar.* file that was there, so I set up the link and it worked.
Once the machine is rebuilt, I will post a new build with a list of things I had to do. (Will take notes this time around.)
Note that the current build I have posted was compiled with a mildly old GCC version.
Give me a week or two and I will have a) a new build, b) more info.
PS:
I've compiled Blender (with a lot of warning on "unused variables" and "cast from pointer to integer of different sizes"); it work but outliner access still not, but I can wait.
yea, i got those warnings too. understanding why is on my list of things to do. but we will see...porting c from 32 to 64 bit architectures is not my forté (anybody have any thoughts on this?)
a mate is burning FC3 on DVD for me tonight, so I hope to be up and running by Sunday evening. wish me luck.
Back in the nineties I ported & maintained a 64 bits Linux dec alpha version. We dropped this in 2001 or so... but the foundation for proper 64 bits support in Blender is still there. It is likely though that new code was added that's not 64 bits compatible (yes, not allowed to put a pointer in an integer), that's all to clean up.
Apple is going to 64 bits in their next upgrade, will definitely check that out. For those interested to already work on it, there's one important coding rule to apply in blender:
-> the variable type "long" has been typedeffed to be either 32 or 64 bits integer, depending pointer size.
So, if you want to do pointer arithmetic, or cast pointers to int, use a "long". Also use "long" in structures, that gets mapped OK. And make sure longs and pointers are properly aligned (8 byte aligned) in structs that get saved in blender files.
This rule might have been gone lost... or not fully covered in makefiles or Scons. All work todo!
OK, have built up machine with FC3 and compiled Blender again. I would expect it to be 'better' than my last 64-bit buid because of the modern gcc compiler.
