POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.animations : Space for Animations Server Time
28 Jul 2024 16:16:52 EDT (-0400)
  Space for Animations (Message 1 to 6 of 6)  
From: Richard Quick
Subject: Space for Animations
Date: 22 Nov 1999 15:36:53
Message: <3839a965@news.povray.org>
I am new to POV-RAY, and what I have seen of the animations, I am
jumping in with both feet.  But before I do, what am I going to be
looking at for usage of space?  I have a little 4GB HD with 1/2 gig
free space left.  Should I wait till I get a second HD, or can I go
ahead, and hope that I do not run out of space?  I have plenty of
graphics from my other applications, creating stationary for OE.

Also, I have only been on the PC since April 1998, and still consider
myself a newbie.    I have a Pentium II MMX 266 MHz, 64MB RAM, 4GB HD,
56Kbs U. S. Robotics modem, 32x CD ROM, ATI video card, and a
SoundBlaster 16 audio card.

What would be  a good second HD to get for my machine?   Ken, anybody?

--

Sincerely,

Richard Quick

P.S.  God Bless you, and may the Lord season your dreams.

http://www.cpinternet.com/~rmquick/


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From: Ken
Subject: Re: Space for Animations
Date: 22 Nov 1999 15:54:39
Message: <3839AD38.BA5F9F74@pacbell.net>
Richard Quick wrote:
> 
> I am new to POV-RAY, and what I have seen of the animations, I am
> jumping in with both feet.  But before I do, what am I going to be
> looking at for usage of space?  I have a little 4GB HD with 1/2 gig
> free space left.  Should I wait till I get a second HD, or can I go
> ahead, and hope that I do not run out of space?

  IF you render at 640x480 and output to .tga you could technically render
a 500 frame animation before you swamp your hard drive. Depending on how
complicated your anim is that is a pretty healthy frame amount. Most people
however render in smaller resolutions so you can add to that frame number
quite a bit if you keep the image size down to a reasonable level. You are
definitely on the low side as far as space on your hard drives if you are
just starting out with POV-Ray.


> Also, I have only been on the PC since April 1998, and still consider
> myself a newbie.    I have a Pentium II MMX 266 MHz, 64MB RAM, 4GB HD,
> 56Kbs U. S. Robotics modem, 32x CD ROM, ATI video card, and a
> SoundBlaster 16 audio card.
> 
> What would be  a good second HD to get for my machine?   Ken, anybody?

 As a long time user of the program and one who always seems to be under
equipped for the job I have two hardware suggestions. Get yourself a nice
new 10 gig drive and upgrade your ram to at least 128 megs. Upgrading your
video card will NOT increase your rendering times so don't bother.
  With this combination you should be Ok until you get the irresistible
urge to get a new 100 mhz buss mother board and a 500+ mhz processor. This
urge will hit you quite suddenly and you should try to mentally prepare
yourself for it :)

-- 
Ken Tyler -  1200+ Povray, Graphics, 3D Rendering, and Raytracing Links:
http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html http://www.povray.org/links/


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From: Peter Popov
Subject: Re: Space for Animations
Date: 22 Nov 1999 15:58:00
Message: <qa05OCsLo=KvQ792ImKlUzqfuwvL@4ax.com>
On Mon, 22 Nov 1999 14:37:25 -0600, "Richard Quick"
<Qui### [at] zdnetmailcom> wrote:

>I am new to POV-RAY, and what I have seen of the animations, I am
>jumping in with both feet.  But before I do, what am I going to be
>looking at for usage of space?  I have a little 4GB HD with 1/2 gig
>free space left.  Should I wait till I get a second HD, or can I go
>ahead, and hope that I do not run out of space?  I have plenty of
>graphics from my other applications, creating stationary for OE.
>
>Also, I have only been on the PC since April 1998, and still consider
>myself a newbie.    I have a Pentium II MMX 266 MHz, 64MB RAM, 4GB HD,
>56Kbs U. S. Robotics modem, 32x CD ROM, ATI video card, and a
>SoundBlaster 16 audio card.
>
>What would be  a good second HD to get for my machine?   Ken, anybody?

Make a simple calculation. A 1 minute, 30 fps, 320x240,
24-bit-per-pixel animation will take at most 395 MB when uncompressed.
Using compressed tga or even better, png, can reduce this
dramatically. So the answer is, don't worry about space yet. After you
assemble the frames in an animation file, you can delete them to free
up your HDD.


Peter Popov
ICQ: 15002700


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From: Spock
Subject: Re: Space for Animations
Date: 22 Nov 1999 15:59:25
Message: <3839aead@news.povray.org>
I think 500MB is plenty to start animating.

A 640x480 image is 901KB (might as well call it 1MB just
in case) so a 60 frame movie will cost you 60MB for the
images plus the finished movie.  I use animated gifs since
they seem to loop smoothly and I like loops (just about the
only way I can get more than a few seconds of animation
is to make it loop and watch it go round and round :-)  My
average 60 frame movie turns out to be between 3MB and
10MB, depending on the number of things I move between
each frame.

As for choosing a hard drive I can only say bigger is better.
I have a 13GB drive and I think it only cost me about $200.
Just pick a reliable brand name, double the size you think
you will need, and do frequent backups...

PS: Any disk can crash so give some serious thought to those
backups.  In theory you only need to back up hand-edited
files so even a floppy is better than nothing.

Richard Quick <Qui### [at] zdnetmailcom> wrote in message
news:3839a965@news.povray.org...
> I am new to POV-RAY, and what I have seen of the animations, I am
> jumping in with both feet.  But before I do, what am I going to be
> looking at for usage of space?  I have a little 4GB HD with 1/2 gig
> free space left.  Should I wait till I get a second HD, or can I go
> ahead, and hope that I do not run out of space?  I have plenty of
> graphics from my other applications, creating stationary for OE.
>
> Also, I have only been on the PC since April 1998, and still consider
> myself a newbie.    I have a Pentium II MMX 266 MHz, 64MB RAM, 4GB HD,
> 56Kbs U. S. Robotics modem, 32x CD ROM, ATI video card, and a
> SoundBlaster 16 audio card.
>
> What would be  a good second HD to get for my machine?   Ken, anybody?
>
> --
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Richard Quick
>
> P.S.  God Bless you, and may the Lord season your dreams.
>
> http://www.cpinternet.com/~rmquick/
>


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From: omniVERSE
Subject: Re: Space for Animations
Date: 22 Nov 1999 16:22:50
Message: <3839b42a@news.povray.org>
I like how he knows to ask for Ken, kinda cute <smirk> huh...?
Such sage advice as usual too.  I for one am bent on making only smaller
frame sizes and committing most animations to small Mpeg files and removing
the rendered images immediately.  It never takes more than 50 megabytes for
me to do one (at a time), it's not exactly a universal thing because any
resolutions and number of frames can be done by anyone based on personal
preference.
Some programs to create the final animation can also be used to add to it
indefinately so there really is no need to have huge amounts of space, just
enough for the end result and room to render the new frames, plus some more.
Calculate out what your program of choice takes to create a certain
length/resolution movie and go from there.
But I don't think you'll need the HD anytime soon, especially if you
compress archiveable files. Upgrade that memory (oops wait for good prices)
and CPU if anything.

Bob

Ken <tyl### [at] pacbellnet> wrote in message
news:3839AD38.BA5F9F74@pacbell.net...
>
>
> Richard Quick wrote:
> >
> > I am new to POV-RAY, and what I have seen of the animations, I am
> > jumping in with both feet.  But before I do, what am I going to be
> > looking at for usage of space?  I have a little 4GB HD with 1/2 gig
> > free space left.  Should I wait till I get a second HD, or can I go
> > ahead, and hope that I do not run out of space?
>
>   IF you render at 640x480 and output to .tga you could technically render
> a 500 frame animation before you swamp your hard drive. Depending on how
> complicated your anim is that is a pretty healthy frame amount. Most
people
> however render in smaller resolutions so you can add to that frame number
> quite a bit if you keep the image size down to a reasonable level. You are
> definitely on the low side as far as space on your hard drives if you are
> just starting out with POV-Ray.
>
>
> > Also, I have only been on the PC since April 1998, and still consider
> > myself a newbie.    I have a Pentium II MMX 266 MHz, 64MB RAM, 4GB HD,
> > 56Kbs U. S. Robotics modem, 32x CD ROM, ATI video card, and a
> > SoundBlaster 16 audio card.
> >
> > What would be  a good second HD to get for my machine?   Ken, anybody?
>
>  As a long time user of the program and one who always seems to be under
> equipped for the job I have two hardware suggestions. Get yourself a nice
> new 10 gig drive and upgrade your ram to at least 128 megs. Upgrading your
> video card will NOT increase your rendering times so don't bother.
>   With this combination you should be Ok until you get the irresistible
> urge to get a new 100 mhz buss mother board and a 500+ mhz processor. This
> urge will hit you quite suddenly and you should try to mentally prepare
> yourself for it :)
>
> --
> Ken Tyler -  1200+ Povray, Graphics, 3D Rendering, and Raytracing Links:
> http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html http://www.povray.org/links/


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From: Karl Pelzer
Subject: Re: Space for Animations
Date: 23 Nov 1999 14:02:42
Message: <383AF349.2F890107@t-online.de>
Richard Quick wrote:
> 
> I am new to POV-RAY, and what I have seen of the animations, I am
> jumping in with both feet.  But before I do, what am I going to be
> looking at for usage of space?  I have a little 4GB HD with 1/2 gig
> free space left.  Should I wait till I get a second HD, or can I go
> ahead, and hope that I do not run out of space?  I have plenty of
> graphics from my other applications, creating stationary for OE.
> 
> Also, I have only been on the PC since April 1998, and still consider
> myself a newbie.    I have a Pentium II MMX 266 MHz, 64MB RAM, 4GB HD,
> 56Kbs U. S. Robotics modem, 32x CD ROM, ATI video card, and a
> SoundBlaster 16 audio card.
> 
> What would be  a good second HD to get for my machine?   Ken, anybody?
> 
> --
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Richard Quick
> 
> P.S.  God Bless you, and may the Lord season your dreams.
> 
> http://www.cpinternet.com/~rmquick/

IMHO, a 1/2 gig is enough as long as you delete the single frames after
having compiled them to a movie.
If you want to start making longer animations I recommend to burn them
on CD-ROM / RW ;-)
But if you really want to get a new hard disk I think the IBM DJNA
352030 (20,3 GB) offers the best GB/money value. In Germany it's about
348 DM.
BTW, did you ever think of overclocking your processor? I'm not sure at
which frequencies the Pentium II 266 MHz will work but take a look at
"Tom's Hardware Guide" http://www.sysdoc.pair.com/
There you'll find plenty of information about it.

Karl


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