Xns### [at] 204213191226...

> It would be useful for resuming rendering scenes that take long to
> parse/pre-process (many photons, radiosity etc).

You can already save and reload your photons and radiosity data so this is
not an issue.

Actually, I tend to think that the use of a binary format to save on parsing
time is a non-issue with modern computers. In my experience, large parsing
times are more often caused by insufficient RAM than by insufficient
processing speed. A contemporary 1-2 Ghz PC can gobble very large meshes and
process long loops very quickly. Clever scene design using switches and
dummies can remove most of the parsing-related problem during the testing
phase. In any case the parsing time is likely to be minimal when compared to
the rendering time, particularly now that we have the mesh2 format and the
saving/loading of photons and radiosity data.
If there's a complicated routine involved, it may be easier to output the
results to a text file once for all (see the demos in the "advanced/blocks"
directory).

This could be more interesting in animation, but then, since the purpose of
the animation is usually to change the scene geometry between frames, the
gain would be minimal in many cases.  (perhaps the IMP people use such a
binary format, I'm not sure).

A binary format could have its uses, but the absence of it is not currently
an actual limitation of Povray. I tend to believe that, given the nature of
Povray, implementing it in a useful way would be quite difficult.

G.


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