Though post-processing is illegal, what about dividing up the image to
distribute the render over multiple computers and then piecing the partial
images back together again in a program like Photoshop?

b/c I have access to a bunch of Macs, but none of them are terribly powerful
(no G5's)

Thanks

> Though post-processing is illegal, what about dividing up the image to
> distribute the render over multiple computers and then piecing the partial
> images back together again in a program like Photoshop?

I think: no post-processing = can be rendered in pov without
post-processing.
If the final picture is the same as the one that would be done on one
computer (like the test the jury may do), i think it's ok.

selsek

Depends on how many years such a render would take on one single machine of 
course :)

What if a rendering can only be verified if one has access to say 200 
machines? (Yes, I know that I'm really theoretical here :-) )

"Eli" <eli### [at] jehoelnet> wrote:
> Depends on how many years such a render would take on one single machine of
> course :)
>
> What if a rendering can only be verified if one has access to say 200
> machines? (Yes, I know that I'm really theoretical here :-) )

Well I'm running on a 700Mhz G4 with a 100Mhz bus, and I'm trying to beat
the uptime of our local nuke plant, so I'm not going to win any speed
competitions.  I do have access to a dual 867Mhz and a single 1Ghz, but
it'd be best if I could use them all.

So is distributing the render in such a way within the rules?

"Plastic Chicken" <nomail@nomail> wrote:

> So is distributing the render in such a way within the rules?

FWIW, I would say "yes". The final image would be the same which ever way
was used to generate it. As long as you only used Photoshop to stitch the
pieces together and not change the actual pixels in any way there would be
no difference between the distributed render and a single machine render.

You may also want to look at PVM POV. This patch can distribute a render
across several machines, effectively doing what you want to do but without
the need to manually compile the image. This is a valid patch by the
POVCOMP rules as the source is available (http://pvmpov.sourceforge.net/),
though this may require some work to get it running on Macs.

Cheers,
Ian.

> > So is distributing the render in such a way within the rules?

It doesn't worry me, as long as we can reproduce the render using what
hardware we have available to us. Of course it's your responsibility to
ensure that what you stitch together is purely the result of POV-Ray's
rendering.

-- Chris

Thanks!