Hallo Barron,

> So, there is one very important difference (in my mind).
I have thought about that, too. However as there are script files beeing
transfered, I was afraid
of opening security-holes to the Internet. I would like such a concept, too.
However I
am not good enough about the POV-Ray SDL to be shure that noone could
distribute
virus-scripts or use open port taking files and scripts for attacking
purpose.

> Second, now I didn't play with SMPOV very much, and that was an older
> version, but I didn't see much in the way of support for animations, which
> is the entire purpose of my program.

This is not clear to me. As far as I know, SMPOV has 100% support for any
anmiation you may want to render. Even the Mega-POV Framestep-feature is
supported. IF you decide to use radiosity etc. you can still use SMPOV and
distribute FULL pictures (e.g. set Tiling to 1).

> don't currently have any plans to add that functionality.  It is designed
to
> handle animations, and transfer any #include the animation may need to
> modify.  It also keeps separate copies of the include files for each
frame,
> so that if one render client fails to deliver the frame can be sent to
> another.  So it boils down to SMPOV seems to be designed for stills, mine
> for animations.
Honestly, I did never use this functionality to have separate include files
for each frame, still
you can have that all if they do not have the same name (in case of current
SMPOV you would have to copy them manually into the com-fiolder). If they
have the same name, then it would not work currently thats true.



The disadvantage of SMPOV is that its not multiplatform, from the
functionality, I see currently no
limitations that would need someone to go somewhere else. Besides that
anything you do is welcome,
and if you have new ideas, it can only be good.

> Some have brought up portability.  SMPOV (correct me if I'm wrong) seems
to
> rely on windows specific networking protocols, probably easy to use, but
not
> so portable, and it won't work over the internet.
True,  SMPOV is not portable and it does not access the I-Net (other then
over a VPN).
To be more exact, I believe there are (VPN-like)programms out there which
enable sharing of
folders via TCP/IP-connections. These programms could be used together with
SMPOV
and I planned to take a look at that at a later time.
However, If I would do something else then only if I could be 100% shure not
to open
 security-holes that way, which may be the case if you open TCP/IP ports and
accept script or other files.

> I am using standard
> TCP/IP, so it can communicate with other computers across the internet.
> Will this functionality be useful?
I would really like the idea, and of course it would be safe.
.
I also did not find a switch to start POV-Ray minimized, so I minimize them
using
some API calls somehow like this:

FindWindow(w2$, wt$):ShowWindow wh, %SW_SHOWMINNOACTIVE

regards
--Theo
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Distributed Network-Rendering or Local SMP-Rendering. With SMPOV and
POV-Ray 3.5. * Download free at: http://www.it-berater.org/smpov.htm

Post a reply to this message