Hi all.

Has there been any discussion about POV performance, specifically what
to avoid to increase performance?

For example, I recently used the City macro to create a 5 X 5 street
city.  
I then replaced one of the types of cars with a vehicle I designed.  The
vehicle that came with the utility is made up of 4 spheres and two
super-elipsoids, IIRC.   Mine was made up of about 25 object, the basic
shape created by 10 or so blobs.  The speed of rending went _way_ down.

OK, I thought, maybe it's the blobs.  I replaced the smooth shaped
airraft with an angled one for the body.  I created the hull with a set
of intersected planes (a technique I got from the Shapes include
Octahedron.)
It went even slower.

I then replaced the hull with a set of boxes, angled to give
approximately the same shape as with the planes.  Some speedup but not
as much as I hoped, however, the number of objects in the vehicle went
up.  I came to the conclusion that it was probably just the total number
of objects in the picture that was effecting the processing time.

So, is there a performance guide somewhere that might give hints on how
to speed up processing?  Has it been discussed here (or on one of the
other POV newsgroups - a quick search didn't produce anything, but I'm
just looking at the titles).  

And finally, should this be in a different newsgroup?

(I have noticed that when I try to create 3d clouds as described in some
examples, that my pps can drop to 50-60.  At that point, unless I really
want to see the picture, I kill it.)

Thanks!

-- 
Tom A.
See everything; over look a great deal; correct a little.  -Blessed Pope
John XXIII

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"Tom A." wrote:
> 
> Hi all.
> 
> Has there been any discussion about POV performance, specifically what
> to avoid to increase performance?
> 
> For example, I recently used the City macro to create a 5 X 5 street
> city.
> I then replaced one of the types of cars with a vehicle I designed.  The
> vehicle that came with the utility is made up of 4 spheres and two
> super-elipsoids, IIRC.   Mine was made up of about 25 object, the basic
> shape created by 10 or so blobs.  The speed of rending went _way_ down.
> 
> OK, I thought, maybe it's the blobs.  I replaced the smooth shaped
> airraft with an angled one for the body.  I created the hull with a set
> of intersected planes (a technique I got from the Shapes include
> Octahedron.)
> It went even slower.
> 
> I then replaced the hull with a set of boxes, angled to give
> approximately the same shape as with the planes.  Some speedup but not
> as much as I hoped, however, the number of objects in the vehicle went
> up.  I came to the conclusion that it was probably just the total number
> of objects in the picture that was effecting the processing time.
> 
> So, is there a performance guide somewhere that might give hints on how
> to speed up processing?  Has it been discussed here (or on one of the
> other POV newsgroups - a quick search didn't produce anything, but I'm
> just looking at the titles).

Try:

http://www.students.tut.fi/~warp/povVFAQ/miscVFAQ.html#renderingspeed
http://www.students.tut.fi/~warp/povVFAQ/miscVFAQ.html#csgspeed

Most of the things you mentioned are explained there.

Possibilities for increasing render speed much depend on the situation,
but it's usually worth trying to change things and see if it improves. 

You will also notice that render speed does not only depend on the objects
but also on textures, lighting and other things.

> 
> And finally, should this be in a different newsgroup?

It's all right here, for the purpose of the single groups have a look at
povray.announce.frequently-asked-questions

> 
> (I have noticed that when I try to create 3d clouds as described in some
> examples, that my pps can drop to 50-60.  At that point, unless I really
> want to see the picture, I kill it.)
> 

50-60 pps, I wish I had such fast rendering scenes... ;-) Patience is
quite mandatory for working with Povray.

Christoph

-- 
Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde>
IsoWood include, radiosity tutorial, TransSkin and other 
things on: http://www.schunter.etc.tu-bs.de/~chris/

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"Tom A." wrote:
> 
> (I have noticed that when I try to create 3d clouds as described in some
> examples, that my pps can drop to 50-60.  At that point, unless I really
> want to see the picture, I kill it.)

That much? Man, you're spoiled. ;)

-Xplo

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> (I have noticed that when I try to create 3d clouds as described in some
> examples, that my pps can drop to 50-60.  At that point, unless I really
> want to see the picture, I kill it.)

I take it you never did any raytracing on a 486 then?

;)

Bye for now,
     Jamie.

Post a reply to this message

Jamie Davison wrote:
> 
> > (I have noticed that when I try to create 3d clouds as described in some
> > examples, that my pps can drop to 50-60.  At that point, unless I really
> > want to see the picture, I kill it.)
> 
> I take it you never did any raytracing on a 486 then?
> 
> ;)
> 
> Bye for now,
>      Jamie.

Actually, I did.  I think my scenes are becoming more complex and I'm
playing with more parts of POV.  


-- 
Tom A.
See everything; over look a great deal; correct a little.  -Blessed Pope
John XXIII

Post a reply to this message

> Hi all.
>
> Has there been any discussion about POV performance, specifically what
> to avoid to increase performance?

I wish.  I'm using povray to render fractals in 3D on an older model mac.
You should hear the 233mhz processor scream when I ask it to manipulate
millions of objects at a time.  Sigh...time to optimize.

-- Brandan

Post a reply to this message

> Hi all.
>
> Has there been any discussion about POV performance, specifically what
> to avoid to increase performance?

I wish.  I'm using povray to render fractals in 3D on an older model mac.
You should hear the 233mhz processor scream when I ask it to manipulate
millions of objects at a time.  Sigh...time to optimize.

-- Brandan

Post a reply to this message

"Tom A." <tar### [at] my-dejacom> wrote in message news:3B44EEE9.98096767@my-deja.com...
>
> Jamie Davison wrote:
> >
> > > (I have noticed that when I try to create 3d clouds as described in some
> > > examples, that my pps can drop to 50-60.  At that point, unless I really
> > > want to see the picture, I kill it.)
> >
> > I take it you never did any raytracing on a 486 then?
>
> Actually, I did.  I think my scenes are becoming more complex and I'm
> playing with more parts of POV.

Oh well, I thought there was the start of a You Know You Haven't Been Ray Tracing Long
Enough theme
going there.  Could have been interesting perhaps.

Bob H., the proud owner of a 486 w/o coprocessor at first ray.

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"Bob H." <omn### [at] msncom> wrote :
>
> Bob H., the proud owner of a 486 w/o coprocessor at first ray.

    Me too, upgraded to a 486dx100 so that I could render that dolphin model
that I found. That would have been about 1995 or 6...

    I think I tried it before, I remember trying something that was supposed
to do 3d art but  didn't work on my Tandy 386-25 with 2 mb RAM and I gave up
on it... it could have been DKBTrace or something, that would have been
around 92-3

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On Fri, 6 Jul 2001 00:25:34 -0500, Bob H. wrote:
>Bob H., the proud owner of a 486 w/o coprocessor at first ray.

68000 here.  No math coprocessor, no memory management, 512K of memory.
I think I started with DBW-Render, though, and then defected to POV-Ray
when Drew Wells did, then abandoned it for a time to play with TurboSilver
(the predecessor to Imagine) then came back to POV sometime in 1993, this
time to stay.

-- 
#macro R(L P)sphere{L F}cylinder{L P F}#end#macro P(V)merge{R(z+a z)R(-z a-z)R(a
-z-z-z a+z)torus{1F clipped_by{plane{a 0}}}translate V}#end#macro Z(a F T)merge{
P(z+a)P(z-a)R(-z-z-x a)pigment{rgbf 1}hollow interior{media{emission 3-T}}}#end 
Z(-x-x.2x)camera{location z*-10rotate x*90normal{bumps.02scale.05}}

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