Thorsten Froehlich wrote:

>
> Hmm, I think you are missing my point.

Perhaps I am, and so I return to this one final time.

> I didn't want to spend much time on
> this, so I kept it short originally, just gave him the solution and pointed
> out that he could have found the answer in the documentation,

First of all, just for the record, I'm a woman.  Dawn is not typically a male
name, though I understand from your name that you probably live someplace where
you don't run into a great many Dawns, so I forgive you the error.

However, I did not feel that you 'just' gave me the solution and..., but that
you gave me the solution and a ration of attitude.  I don't apreciate being
told that if I had just thought about it a little more, I could have come up
with the solution... mainly because I think quite thoughoughly about
/everything/ before I post here.  I am a woman in a male dominated field; I am
paranoid about asking stupid questions, largely because of responses such as
yours.

> No, the section tries to avoid having to go into technical details.
> Unfortunately the concept used is rather complex.

Surprising, then, that I didn't pick up on it the first time, isn't it?

> And look closer at his original statement about what he is modeling - an
> aircraft cockpit with several markings.  Based on this and the fact that he
> ran out of memory, lots of image maps are in these texture layers, I
> suspect.  Image maps = memory consumption, right?
>

If you state it that way, with the clear steps of your reasoning, yes, it seems
obvious.  It was not obvious to me at the time I asked the question; I
appologize for not being familiar with how C memory functions translate, or do
not translate, into Mac OS programs.

> No, it does not.  Nor does me being a developer give you as user the right
> to insult me as you want.  And, have I insulted anybody personally so far?

I certainly felt insulted; however, I recognize that you are not responsible
for my feelings.

> What I do not like is the attitude by some people that they do not even want
> to try to solve the problem by themselves.  There are plenty of pointer is
> the documentation to increase memory whenever you have problems (as our past
> experience shows that this solves over 50% of all problems).
>

You are making an unwarrented presumption.  I did in fact try to solve the
problem myself.  I sat and read the section of the documentation on layered
textures and image maps three or four times, trying to see if there were any
hidden 'gotchas' that I had missed the first time.

I tried moving the camera (the solution to the last stupid question I posted to
this group); I tried commenting out individual portions of my layered
textures.  Again, perhaps if I were more knowlegeable, or were already thinking
about memory usage, I would have thought about how much memory the individual
decals were taking; I did not.

What I did end up wondering, and asked about, was if there was a limit to how
many layers of transparency could be modeled, because /that/ is what I was
thinking about at the time... the complexity of modeling a transparent object
with one piece which is non-transparent.

As it turned out, I was wrong.  I am often wrong.  Mea culpa.


> But no, how can one draw the conclusion from the error message "Could not
> create image buffer" if "Is there a limit to the number of transparent
> layers you can put on an object?".
>

Because I had also, in one of the renders previous to the one I quoted in my
message, gotten an error about a lack of IDAP information.  I have no idea what
IDAP information is; I presumed that there might be a problem with one of the
images I was using in my image_map.

I am not a technical person.  I don't program, I don't have a degree in math, I
don't really even have all that much to do with computers, usually.  I simply
was not thinking in the right direction, and after beating my head against it
for an hour or so, I asked a question.

Prior to this, all of the responses I have gotten on this group have been both
helpful and friendly.  Your response, while perhaps helpful, was decidedly
unfriendly.

> However, all he did was at most try to render again (if at all), and then,
> because it is more convinient than looking at the documentation for five
> minutes or less, to simply post it here.  How little consideration he gave
> this?  Well, he did not even bother go give any information about the
> platform he is running on.

Again, you are making an unwarrented assumption.  You were not there; you do
not know what steps I took, or what I looked at.  You are /assuming/ that I was
inconsiderate.  I did not feel that I was being.  However, thank you, in the
future I shall be much more leary of posting to this group.

>  he didn't want to look or think about the problem, just wanted an answer
> immediately.
>

Another unwarrented assumption.

> But no, his attitude of "there is a problem, I don't care if POV-Ray is
> free, just fix it now, I am your customer" is the problem I have with him.

Her.

And yet another unwarrented assumption.  You have a completely wrong idea of my
attitude.  My attitude when I originally posted the question was "I don't
understand this, and I have exhausted the resources I have available to me, so
I was hoping someone could offer some insight."

After your post, my attitude became, "I don't care who you are, or how useful
the information you've given is, you have belittled me, and I don't care for
that."

And you know what?  I don't.

Now, this has all gone on for /much/ longer than it really ought to have.  I
feel insulted by you; you feel insulted by me.  To such an extent as I am
responsible for having begun this, I appologize.  I never intended to belittle
anyone, never intended that my question should be taken as a slight on the
documentation, the program, or the POV-team.

In fact, I have commented a couple of times on the supurb quality of the
official documentation, and I stand by that statement -- I will even repeat
it.  In general, POV-Ray has the finest official documentation I am aware of in
any open-source program.

I am greatful to those in this group who have helped me out in the past.  I am
greatful to the POV-Team, including yourself, for having produced this program.

What I am not greatful for is the attitude with which you have greeted my
question, my lack of understanding, and my problem.

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