Hiya, POV People...

Can anyone suggest methods of organising a network to batch-up rendering
large numbers of files.

I've got the following setup...

    o) An NT 4.0 SP4 network environment
    o) A webserver (actually a WebL server) which maintains a list of the
directories and source files to be rendered.
    o) Client machines running a WebL script which connects to the server
and grabs a handful of files, and copies the output to a network drive.
    o) MegaPov as the renderer

Most of the batches I run last 3-4 days (e.g. about 4000-5000 frames).  Of
course, if there are any source file errors, or date errors, etc. the whole
thing can go pear-shaped.

Would anyone like to suggest methods of maintaining quality control in the
batch script, including such operations as:
    o) "Linting" all source files
    o) checking referenced textures and meshes exist
    o) performing a "proofing" run with random samples from each machine
    o) generating reports on such

Specifically, does anyone know of a "povray checker" which returns useful
information.  If not, how useful would anyone else find such a tool?

Cheers

Nick Drew
hyp### [at] btinternetcom

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Nick Drew wrote:
> 
> Hiya, POV People...
> 
> Can anyone suggest methods of organising a network to batch-up rendering
> large numbers of files.

Rather than addressing any of your questions directly I would suggest
that you contact Paul T. Bourke. He recently set a large render farm
at a university running POV-Ray and is now offering it as a service.
I have found he is quite happy to talk about his set up and would
probably a good resource for you to draw from.

http://www.swin.edu.au/supercomputing/

-- 
Ken Tyler -  1300+ Povray, Graphics, 3D Rendering, and Raytracing Links:
http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html http://www.povray.org/links/

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