I'm not really a new user since I've been using the program since
DKBTrace. But since I'm new to the POVRay newsgroups, and I've
only really dabbled with POVRay, I'll consider myself a 'noob'.

I also tried searching the help and website for this but I just
don't know what to call the problem to find if it's been discussed.

I am using an external program to generate scene files, which
consist of a few to sometimes thousands of spheres. No problem here.
Each scene renders in 2 seconds. But, I'm doing hundreds of frames
to make an animation. OK, so I generate all my scene files and throw
them in the queue. The annoying thing is that although each scene
only takes 2 seconds to render, POVRay pauses for 5 seconds between
each render, effectively increasing the render time by 250%.

I couldn't find anything in the help files or a brief glance
through settings that affects this, so....

Since POVRay doesn't pause so long between renders when it does
animations, I got the bright (?) idea of turning each scene into
an include file and just rendering one pov file. I used the clock
parameter to generate the include filename on each pass.

Although the method works, the weird thing is that each frame
takes longer than the previous, so that by the 70th frame the
scene is taking over a minute instead of the 2 seconds it should.

Here's some relevant code:

my resolution.ini....

  [640x480, No AA, 365 frames]
  Width=640
  Height=480
  Antialias=Off
  Initial_Frame=1
  Final_Frame=365
  Initial_Clock=0
  Final_Clock=364

from the pov file....

  #declare framenumber = clock+1;
  #declare name = "spheres";
  #declare frame = str(framenumber, -4, 0);
  #declare extension = ".inc";
  #declare filename = concat(name, frame, extension);

  #include filename

The only other stuff in the code is the usual color, texture,
and shape includes, a light source, a camera, and the obligatory
checkered floor.

The sequence of declares is what I use to generate the filename
to be included in each frame. For example, on the first frame
where the clock is 0, the filename becomes "spheres0000.inc", and
the tenth frame is "spheres0010.inc". This works.

At first I though that each frame doesn't just include the one
include file of the current frame, but all the previous includes
as well!!! But the rendered image is fine. It shows exactly what
it should show with no extra stuff from previous includes.

My other idea is that although POVRay isn't using the previous
includes, they are still resident in memory and are being parsed.
But in the message window, the parse time is always low, less
than 1 second (zero seconds shown). But each successive frame
takes longer to actually render.

If this can't be solved, I'll just go back to generating full
scene files and using the queue.

I'm using v3.6, 3.6.0.icl8.win32 to be exact.

TIA!

Brian
-- 
http://www.skywise711.com - Lasers, Seismology, Astronomy, Skepticism
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