Darren New wrote:
> My point is that Rick [Kity5] seems to be complaining that POV isn't
> suitable because it doesn't already have the distribution stuff built in
> as robustly as he'd like. 

Not in the slightest, I am stating that POV takes to frikin long to render
huges images. Yes there are existing soloutions for distributing a render
(therefore finishing it faster) but they do so at a cost - that cost
usually being radioasity.

> *If* there's nothing in povray that prevents you from rendering
> different scanlines on different computers and getting the same result
> back, it would seem that distributing the render however he wants to
> would do the trick.

Thats the problem. POV returns different results if you render a whole or a
part of an image. All the current options to distribute a render fail when
radioasity is used, you get a tile effect when you put the parts back
together.

>> At the very least, any external solution runs the
>> risk of being abandoned,
> 
> Well, if it's open source, that's not much of a problem. Pov-ray runs
> the risk of being abandoned as well. Welcome to the real world. ;-)

If such a system is outside the scope of the official project, there is no
way of ensuring future compatability.

> Again, this is easy to avoid. Release the first version under GPL or
> public domain or BSD or whatever.

Then you will have conflicts with the povray licence.
 
> Well, then you fix it.

Not that simple, it all depends on what has changed. It could be said that
the adding of radioasity trashed compatability with the (at the time) only
existing distributed system (pvmpov)

Now if pvmpov had been part of the official project that wouldn't have
happened.

> probably cost less to write the software than to buy the first (say) 3
> machines of the render farm.

But the threat of future modifications to the core application breaking the
entire shooting match and leaving someone with a large invetsment is not
going to inspire anyone.

The povray licence isnt exactly helpful either.

> But I'm still waiting to hear from someone whether there's a feature of
> povray that would prevent a distributed render from giving the same
> results and that you can't work around.

radioasity.

The lead on client-server rendering has to come from the official team.

-- 
Rick

Kitty5 NewMedia http://Kitty5.com
POV-Ray News & Resources http://Povray.co.uk
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