POV-Ray looks like a great piece of software. Too bad I can't use it. *_*

Using POV-Ray 3.1d for Mac 68k w/o FPU on a Performa 475 (68LC040/25) running
MacOS 8.1, I encountered the following problems:

1. "Preview" tab in render settings seems to have the same crashing bug as
"Output" tab (the latter bug having been documented). "Editor" tab in
preferences has the same problem. Workaround seems to be the same, but
occasionally fails.

2. Despite what the dox claim, there is no way to #include files from any
directory other than the one in which the current scene file resides; messing
with .INI files and setting an alternate folder in the prefs has no effect.

3. Regardless of the mosaic size you specify, the minimum starting size seems
to be four pixels.. even if you turn mosaic off. If the mosaic is set to
something like start 128/end 32, it will render down to 32 pixel mosaic and
then jump to 4 instead of jumping to 1.

4. Additionally, once the mosaic size gets down to 8 (or 16? I forget), the
giant "pixels" are blurred, as if POV-Ray were trying to antialias them.. even
when anitaliasing is turned off.

5. And the worst is saved for last: about 80-90% of the time, a preview render
will lock up the machine. The complexity and composition of the scene seem not
to matter, and it almost always happens when POV-Ray gets down to 2 pixel mosaic.

Is anyone else out there with a similar configuration suffering similar problems?

-Xplo

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In article <36FAC0EB.A0255447@infomagic.com> , Xplo Eristotle 
<xpl### [at] infomagiccom>  wrote:

> Using POV-Ray 3.1d for Mac 68k w/o FPU on a Performa 475 (68LC040/25) running
> MacOS 8.1, I encountered the following problems:
>
> 1. "Preview" tab in render settings seems to have the same crashing bug as
> "Output" tab (the latter bug having been documented). "Editor" tab in
> preferences has the same problem. Workaround seems to be the same, but
> occasionally fails.

The bug is random in these tabs to be precise...we (hope) to finally have a
fix for these problems in 3.1e due in a few days.

> 2. Despite what the dox claim, there is no way to #include files from any
> directory other than the one in which the current scene file resides; messing
> with .INI files and setting an alternate folder in the prefs has no effect.

Hmm, there is no known problem with these, however, please note this: The
application preferences may not get saved (but they are in effect!) until
POV-Ray quits _without_ crashing. Did you check that the prefs are still
there after it crashed?
If they are listed and it still does not work, are there other problems
shown in the status window?

> 3. Regardless of the mosaic size you specify, the minimum starting size seems
> to be four pixels.. even if you turn mosaic off. If the mosaic is set to
> something like start 128/end 32, it will render down to 32 pixel mosaic and
> then jump to 4 instead of jumping to 1.

I cannot reproduce this bug either. Did you change the preference before
rendering? Also note visible in the Render Preferences dialog, the
magnification is the preview window is part of the preferences. In case the
prefs get corrupted the magnification might go up to the limit which is 400%
and would explain the size of 4. If you enter the magnification popup menu
in the preview window, but leave it without making a choice, does the window
display or the menu change?

> 4. Additionally, once the mosaic size gets down to 8 (or 16? I forget), the
> giant "pixels" are blurred, as if POV-Ray were trying to antialias them.. even
> when anitaliasing is turned off.

I am not sure what you mean. Are you sure you are not rendering with
radiosity on?

> 5. And the worst is saved for last: about 80-90% of the time, a preview render
> will lock up the machine. The complexity and composition of the scene seem not
> to matter, and it almost always happens when POV-Ray gets down to 2 pixel
> mosaic.

It seems that by the time you see this the POV-Ray application has been
completely corrupted and the crash is only the result of all the previous
problems.
Another idea I have: Are you running SoftFPU?

However, if you do _not_ touch the application and render preferences dialog
before rendering but POV-Ray still crashes, it would be great if you could
fill out the bug report form in the docs folder and e-mail it to us.

> Is anyone else out there with a similar configuration suffering similar
> problems?

We are not aware of any problem except those (serious) ones with the dialog
tabs. This problem is a bug in the Appearance manager and Apple seems to be
aware of it. Our problem is that Apple charges for developer level support
and that is a bit hard for the development of freeware...

Anyway, the best I can say for now is for you to wait until 3.1e is out and
see if we (finally) have found a source code workaround for the tabs so you
no longer have to worry about it. I suspect that all the other problems are
somehow related to this problem and will go away.

I am sorry for all this problems.


     Thorsten


PS:

> POV-Ray looks like a great piece of software. Too bad I can't use it. *_*

In case you still have problems with 3.1e which will be our _final_ official
68K supporting version you may want to try out the following unofficial
version of POV-Ray: <http://users.skynet.be/smellenbergh/>

Disclaimer: Mentioning this unofficial version is no recommendation, just a
possible solution other than not using POV-Ray at all.


____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich
e-mail: pov### [at] csicom

I am a member of the POV-Ray Team.
Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://www.povray.org and
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/povraymac/

Post a reply to this message

Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> 
> In article <36FAC0EB.A0255447@infomagic.com> , Xplo Eristotle
> <xpl### [at] infomagiccom>  wrote:
> 
> > Using POV-Ray 3.1d for Mac 68k w/o FPU on a Performa 475 (68LC040/25) running
> > MacOS 8.1, I encountered the following problems:

> > 2. Despite what the dox claim, there is no way to #include files from any
> > directory other than the one in which the current scene file resides; messing
> > with .INI files and setting an alternate folder in the prefs has no effect.
> 
> Hmm, there is no known problem with these, however, please note this: The
> application preferences may not get saved (but they are in effect!) until
> POV-Ray quits _without_ crashing. Did you check that the prefs are still
> there after it crashed?

It occurred to me that something like this might be happening, so I
specifically set the folder, quit, and relaunched. It had no beneficial effect.

> If they are listed and it still does not work, are there other problems
> shown in the status window?

Not really; it's simply unable to locate the files. Evidently it just flat-out
refuses to look anywhere else but the directory that contains the saved scene
file, but doesn't say so.

> > 3. Regardless of the mosaic size you specify, the minimum starting size seems
> > to be four pixels.. even if you turn mosaic off. If the mosaic is set to
> > something like start 128/end 32, it will render down to 32 pixel mosaic and
> > then jump to 4 instead of jumping to 1.
> 
> I cannot reproduce this bug either. Did you change the preference before
> rendering?

Yes. I tried various number combinations, and I also turned mosaic off (to no effect).

> Also note visible in the Render Preferences dialog, the
> magnification is the preview window is part of the preferences. In case the
> prefs get corrupted the magnification might go up to the limit which is 400%
> and would explain the size of 4. If you enter the magnification popup menu
> in the preview window, but leave it without making a choice, does the window
> display or the menu change?

I haven't messed with the magnification popup, so I can't say. But after
rendering in 4-pixel chunks, it starts going down to 2- and 1-pixel chunks
(unless it hangs), so I don't think that's the problem, unless magnification
works a lot differently from how I think it does.

> > 4. Additionally, once the mosaic size gets down to 8 (or 16? I forget), the
> > giant "pixels" are blurred, as if POV-Ray were trying to antialias them.. even
> > when anitaliasing is turned off.
> 
> I am not sure what you mean.

The effect is similar to what you get when you blow up an image in Photoshop
(using interpolation): the image looks jaggy, but the edges of the jags are
blurred together.

> Are you sure you are not rendering with
> radiosity on?

I think it does it with radiosity off as well.. but since I hadn't considered
that, I wasn't paying much attention, so I can't say for certain.

> > 5. And the worst is saved for last: about 80-90% of the time, a preview render
> > will lock up the machine. The complexity and composition of the scene seem not
> > to matter, and it almost always happens when POV-Ray gets down to 2 pixel
> > mosaic.
> 
> It seems that by the time you see this the POV-Ray application has been
> completely corrupted and the crash is only the result of all the previous
> problems.

*shrugs* Fresh installs suffer from the same problem, so if it's corrupted,
it's corrupted at the source.

> Another idea I have: Are you running SoftFPU?

Not at that time, no. I turned it off, since it's not too stable itself (not
on this chip, anyway). In fact, I tried running POV-Ray with all extensions
off just in case, but that didn't help either.

> However, if you do _not_ touch the application and render preferences dialog
> before rendering but POV-Ray still crashes, it would be great if you could
> fill out the bug report form in the docs folder and e-mail it to us.

I'll look into it.

> Anyway, the best I can say for now is for you to wait until 3.1e is out and
> see if we (finally) have found a source code workaround for the tabs so you
> no longer have to worry about it. I suspect that all the other problems are
> somehow related to this problem and will go away.

Any idea of a date (or a month, whatever) on that?

> In case you still have problems with 3.1e which will be our _final_ official
> 68K supporting version you may want to try out the following unofficial
> version of POV-Ray: <http://users.skynet.be/smellenbergh/>
> 
> Disclaimer: Mentioning this unofficial version is no recommendation, just a
> possible solution other than not using POV-Ray at all.

Noted. I'll look into that too. Thanks.

-Xplo

Post a reply to this message

In article <36FB1833.6E711D6C@infomagic.com> , Xplo Eristotle 
<xpl### [at] infomagiccom>  wrote:

> It occurred to me that something like this might be happening, so I
> specifically set the folder, quit, and relaunched. It had no beneficial
> effect.
>
>> If they are listed and it still does not work, are there other problems shown
>> in the status window?
>
> Not really; it's simply unable to locate the files. Evidently it just flat-out
> refuses to look anywhere else but the directory that contains the saved scene
> file, but doesn't say so.

Hmm, you can try one thing to see what is going wrong: Check the "Write INI
File" option in the Scene tab and then see if the INI file contains a
"Library_Path" entry with the path you set.
You may also want to check the for leading spaces in volume names, e.g if
the volume is named " Macintosh HD" instead of "Macintosh HD" this will not
work (because of some technical reasons in the core, platform independed
code of POV-Ray).

> I haven't messed with the magnification popup, so I can't say. But after
> rendering in 4-pixel chunks, it starts going down to 2- and 1-pixel chunks
> (unless it hangs), so I don't think that's the problem, unless magnification
> works a lot differently from how I think it does.

No, then you are right, this is not what is suppossed to happen.

> The effect is similar to what you get when you blow up an image in Photoshop
> (using interpolation): the image looks jaggy, but the edges of the jags are
> blurred together.

I understand now.
Theoretically this cannot happen at all, we draw plain rectangles using the
Macintosh toolbox to draw to the screen, and there is no interpolation
option...if you can verify that this happens with radiosity off (and in
3.1e) I will look into this further, especially because this problem has
never been reported so far. (Sorry, I can't do it right now - POOV-Ray is a
hobby project and currently other issues require my full attention).

>> It seems that by the time you see this the POV-Ray application has been
>> completely corrupted and the crash is only the result of all the previous
>> problems.

> *shrugs* Fresh installs suffer from the same problem, so if it's corrupted,
> it's corrupted at the source.

Ups, my mistake: I don't mean that the application _file_ is corrupted, the
application code in _memory_ is corrupted.

>> However, if you do _not_ touch the application and render preferences dialog
>> before rendering but POV-Ray still crashes, it would be great if you could
>> fill out the bug report form in the docs folder and e-mail it to us.

> I'll look into it.

Another idea: Do you use the default memory settings? If you are rendering a
scene with lots of objects, preview, radiosity etc on POV-Ray will need a
lot of memory. We still have sometimes crashes when memory gets far to low
for some reason. You may want to try increasing the memory size of POV-Ray
in the Finder. For the scene that crashes near a mosaic preview level of 2,
try to just double the maximum memory (and make sure POV-Ray really got that
much memory) and try it again - does it still crash?

> Any idea of a date (or a month, whatever) on that?

Most likely within one week.


    Thorsten


____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich
e-mail: pov### [at] csicom

I am a member of the POV-Ray Team.
Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://www.povray.org and
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/povraymac/

Post a reply to this message

Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> 
> In article <36FB1833.6E711D6C@infomagic.com> , Xplo Eristotle
> <xpl### [at] infomagiccom>  wrote:
> 
> > Not really; it's simply unable to locate the files. Evidently it just flat-out
> > refuses to look anywhere else but the directory that contains the saved scene
> > file, but doesn't say so.
> 
> You may also want to check the for leading spaces in volume names, e.g if
> the volume is named " Macintosh HD" instead of "Macintosh HD" this will not
> work (because of some technical reasons in the core, platform independed
> code of POV-Ray).

That's it.

> > The effect is similar to what you get when you blow up an image in Photoshop
> > (using interpolation): the image looks jaggy, but the edges of the jags are
> > blurred together.
> 
> I understand now.
> Theoretically this cannot happen at all, we draw plain rectangles using the
> Macintosh toolbox to draw to the screen, and there is no interpolation
> option...if you can verify that this happens with radiosity off (and in
> 3.1e) I will look into this further, especially because this problem has
> never been reported so far.

*nods*

> >> It seems that by the time you see this the POV-Ray application has been
> >> completely corrupted and the crash is only the result of all the previous
> >> problems.
> 
> > *shrugs* Fresh installs suffer from the same problem, so if it's corrupted,
> > it's corrupted at the source.
> 
> Ups, my mistake: I don't mean that the application _file_ is corrupted, the
> application code in _memory_ is corrupted.

Even if I reboot and try a fresh render immediately after launching POV-Ray,
it'll hang.

> >> However, if you do _not_ touch the application and render preferences dialog
> >> before rendering but POV-Ray still crashes, it would be great if you could
> >> fill out the bug report form in the docs folder and e-mail it to us.
> 
> > I'll look into it.
> 
> Another idea: Do you use the default memory settings? If you are rendering a
> scene with lots of objects, preview, radiosity etc on POV-Ray will need a
> lot of memory. We still have sometimes crashes when memory gets far to low
> for some reason. You may want to try increasing the memory size of POV-Ray
> in the Finder. For the scene that crashes near a mosaic preview level of 2,
> try to just double the maximum memory (and make sure POV-Ray really got that
> much memory) and try it again - does it still crash?

I do use the default settings, but my scenes have so far been exceedingly
simple, since I'm still trying to get the hang of things. I can try doubling
the memory, though...

-Xplo

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