Brent Fraser wrote:

> this is done by re-parsing.  I get that; what I don't get is having to 
> re-read height_field and image_map files (non-changing raster files) on 
> every frame render.

well, it's what you get when a software originally intended to
render single images is extended by an animation feature which
basically renders a lot of single images sequentially. It doesn't
hurt most users, as parse time is usually short compared to the
render time (some people here render single images which take
more than a day just by themselves).

I suppose your best bet is to compile a custom version of POV-Ray.
It won't need to support generic persistent variables, just a hack
specific to your animation to use a pointer to some preloaded image
data for just that one height_field and its texture.

BTW, did you try how fast the animation renders when you subsample
the images to 50% width/height (i.e. 25% image size)? If parse time
reduces by much more than a factor of 4 then your main problem is
not having enough memory.

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