I've encountered this some time ago as well. It seems, that
the calculations for component-based textures are very
excessive.
And, thinking about it, its no surprise. First of all,
POV probably averages all textures, weighted by their
distance to the position being sampled. Its like
sampling the entire blob, with all textures, for every
pixel you hit, to actually get POV to know which
rgb/finish/normal you have on that position (you know
that when using pigment, you actually use a texture with
changed pigment, but default normal and finish, do you?).

When using glass, reflections/refractions, this can get quiet
an amazing task for POV...
Go figure why POV doesn't just stop.

I'd like to know more about blobs, but perhaps you should
ask your question with a more blob-fitting title?

Regards,

Tim

--
Tim Nikias
Homepage: http://www.digitaltwilight.de/no_lights/index.html
Email: Tim### [at] gmxde

> I've only been at this a year, but something seems out of whack. Have
> you checked your max trace level and adc bailout settings? I have also
> seen big jumps in run times when I accidentally create coincident
> surfaces. How complicated is your blob object?
> Bill P.
>
> Alf Peake wrote:
> >
> > <wimper>
> > 320*240. No radiosity, no photons and no aa. Just one glass
> > multi-coloured blob on its own. 140PPH and dropping after 3 pixels
> > into object. Sheeesh. I figure around 4 months? And I used to love my
> > Celeron 500. I'll try again in a couple of years time.
> >
> > And a different scene with photons - after a 3 hour parse - "Slab
> > Building Error: Out of memory.  Cannot allocate 327680 bytes for
> > photons."  Mummy! Make that nasty Windows go away!
> > </wimper>
> >
> > There, now I feel better ;)
> >
> > Alf

Post a reply to this message