I'm having problems with the latest beta of PovRay (3.7 beta 18) on 32-bit
Windows, with an Athlon 64 x2 CPU.

I'm using the latest non-beta version (3.6.1) which works fine on its own.
It continues to work okay with cmedit32.dll and povcmax32.dll substituted
for the versions in povwin-3.7.beta.zip. But if I replace pvengine.exe with
either pvengine.exe or pvengine-sse2.exe from the same zip, I experience the
following problems:

PovRay doesn't seem to know when it's finished rendering. It reaches 100%,
but doesn't get as far as the message telling you rendering is complete,
the bmp file is in such-and-such a folder, etc. Sometimes it does work the
first few times, rendering the sample biscuit.pov file at +w320 +h240, but
then if I render at +w800 +h600 I get the problems. Once it's broken,
that's it -- I have to force PovRay to shut down, since it thinks there is
still a render in progress and can't stop it. I have to restart it to get
any rendering done.

Also, manually stopping a render while in progress often doesn't work. The
render does stop, but the application doesn't seem to notice, so the
command line remains greyed out, and the 'stop' button isn't replaced with
the 'run' button, meaning I can't start a new render. Sometimes it notices
eventually ... sometimes it doesn't.

But even then, I usually can't start a new render: nothing useful happens
when I click 'run'. I just get an 'Unknown internal error' report in the
message window. Also, sometimes I'm left with a hanging process using 50%
of the CPU, even though it's supposed to have finished rendering and it's
at 100% completion.

Similarly, if I 'Re-render insert menu bitmaps', it happily renders 10-20 or
so bitmaps, but then sticks at the 100% stage of one particular one. It
always seems to get stuck on the same bitmap.

Everything works again if I go back to the v3.6 exe. But then rendering is
half as quick, because only one CPU core gets used. :(

I did not have these problems with beta 17. Seems like a thread-related
issue. Any ideas what's going wrong?

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LiquidEyes wrote:
> I'm using the latest non-beta version (3.6.1) which works fine on its own.
> It continues to work okay with cmedit32.dll and povcmax32.dll substituted
> for the versions in povwin-3.7.beta.zip. But if I replace pvengine.exe with
> either pvengine.exe or pvengine-sse2.exe from the same zip, I experience the
> following problems:

AFAIK, you shouldn't be replacing the files in your normal distribution. 
  Just leave them as they are, and unzip the beta file into a new 
directory, and things should work fine.

I can verify that the latest beta works fine for me.

...Chambers

Post a reply to this message

> AFAIK, you shouldn't be replacing the files in your normal distribution.
>   Just leave them as they are, and unzip the beta file into a new
> directory, and things should work fine.

Sorry I don't understand!

The beta zip file only contains a handful of files (mostly DLLs). The
instructions explicitly say you are supposed to install 3.6.1 first.

If I just install the beta files to a new folder, how will PovRay know where
they are?

If I've got the wrong end of the stick, please can you point me in the
direction of a walk-through for installing the beta? Thanks in advance. :)

Post a reply to this message

> I'm having problems with the latest beta of PovRay (3.7 beta 18) on 32-bit
> Windows, with an Athlon 64 x2 CPU.
...
I get similar problems running the 'benchmark' from the menu, title bar of 
render window lists 100%, timer in bottom right keep on counting.
Benchmark with one cpu or all cpu's, gives same result.

Athlon 64 x2 2gb ram
WinXP sp2

Stephen

Post a reply to this message

LiquidEyes wrote:
>> AFAIK, you shouldn't be replacing the files in your normal distribution.
>>   Just leave them as they are, and unzip the beta file into a new
>> directory, and things should work fine.
> 
> Sorry I don't understand!
> 
> The beta zip file only contains a handful of files (mostly DLLs). The
> instructions explicitly say you are supposed to install 3.6.1 first.
> 
> If I just install the beta files to a new folder, how will PovRay know where
> they are?

You DO need to install POV-Ray 3.6.1 first.  After that, unzip the beta 
files to a new folder.

I don't know if it will solve your problem or not, because I'm only 
using a 32bit Athlon XP - but you said you're running 32bit Windows, so 
it shouldn't be related to your processor being an Athlon 64.

...Chambers

Post a reply to this message

"LiquidEyes" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> PovRay doesn't seem to know when it's finished rendering. It reaches 100%,
> but doesn't get as far as the message telling you rendering is complete,
> the bmp file is in such-and-such a folder, etc. Sometimes it does work the
> first few times, rendering the sample biscuit.pov file at +w320 +h240, but
> then if I render at +w800 +h600 I get the problems. Once it's broken,
> that's it -- I have to force PovRay to shut down, since it thinks there is
> still a render in progress and can't stop it. I have to restart it to get
> any rendering done.
>
> Also, manually stopping a render while in progress often doesn't work. The
> render does stop, but the application doesn't seem to notice, so the
> command line remains greyed out, and the 'stop' button isn't replaced with
> the 'run' button, meaning I can't start a new render. Sometimes it notices
> eventually ... sometimes it doesn't.

This seems to be the same problem with crackle. If you replace the 'crackle'
keyword in the Pig4 declaration (biscuit.pov) with another pattern the
render proceeds as expected. It is as you say picture-size dependent and
happens - in this case - at 512x384 and above.

Jeroen.

Post a reply to this message

LiquidEyes nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 01-01-2007 14:42:
>> AFAIK, you shouldn't be replacing the files in your normal distribution.
>>   Just leave them as they are, and unzip the beta file into a new
>> directory, and things should work fine.

> Sorry I don't understand!

> The beta zip file only contains a handful of files (mostly DLLs). The
> instructions explicitly say you are supposed to install 3.6.1 first.

> If I just install the beta files to a new folder, how will PovRay know where
> they are?

> If I've got the wrong end of the stick, please can you point me in the
> direction of a walk-through for installing the beta? Thanks in advance. :)


Install version 3.6.1.
Create a sub-directory in the bin directory.
Extract the archive there.
Run the beta from that location.
That way, all is easy to find.

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
Please hassle me, I thrive on stress.

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