I'm still wondering that such a simple questions bears such a vivid thread.
As I'm using POVRay on my linux box I can't say much how long it takes 
to load the splash screen and how long it is shown. But once you have 
fired it up you can render as much as you want without seeing the splash 
screen again.
If you stumble over yourself by starting POVRay over and over again, and 
that over a slow net connection, you don't deserve to see the splash 
screen each time. Continous scene animations can be done even with 
complex camera motions with arrays of positions and orientations  or 
just simple splines and the <clock> or <frame> statement.
It is just admissible to honor the people that worked on and coded 
POVRay and to remind people what amazing piece of software they gave us, 
and that for free.

... dave

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I think the easiest way to get rid of the spash screen on windows is to
use the commandline version of MegaPov - http://megapov.inetart.net/

I agree that the splash screen is annoying, especially when trying to
render an animation in the _background_ (and no, some animations can't
be rendered using POV's built in "animation" features, e.g. if large
meshes are generated per frame - and please don't tell me about "shell
out" now.)

-sascha

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sascha wrote:
> and no, some animations can't
> be rendered using POV's built in "animation" features, e.g. if large
> meshes are generated per frame

This doesn't have anything to do with the original topic but all right, 
for those who didn't know:

When you have a set of scenes

scene_a.pov
scene_b.pov
...
scene_x.pov

and you want to render them all you can *always* do so, no matter how 
large meshes or whatever are generated in those scenes, by rendering the 
following animation:

#switch (frame_number)

   #case (1)
     #include "scene_a.pov"
   #break
   #case (2)
     #include "scene_a.pov"
   #break
   ...
   #case (X)
     #include "scene_x.pov"
   #break

#end

Of course if you use a numerical naming scheme for the scenes you can 
further reduce that to a one-liner but that's just for the lazy...

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Landscape of the week:
http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/ (Last updated 24 Jul. 2005)
MegaPOV with mechanics simulation: http://megapov.inetart.net/

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"Christoph Hormann" <chr### [at] gmxde> wrote in message
news:dheor6$4cg$1@chho.imagico.de...
> Gilles Tran wrote:
> >
> > I read you well, but your immediate answer assumes that there is
something
> > inherently evil in not wanting to display the splash screen of the
current,
> > official Windows version and I still fail to see what's illegal and
> > unethical there.
>
> No.  Maybe that wasn't completely clear from my first reply but there is
> nothing wrong in wanting to run a render with POV-Ray without a splash
> screen being displayed and i clearly said that:
>
 > If you don't like this (and i can think of good reasons for this) don't
use the GUI version.

Honestly, it wasn't clear at all. Your first statement clearly said to me
that the only reason one would want to disable the splash screen is grounded
in immoral behavior. If that's not what you intented, perhaps you should
examine your posts a bit more before sending them. I've reread it in it's
entirety several times, and I see no other interpretation.

Your second statement about building a version without graphical output was
then a bit odd. The two statements together read something like, "It's
immoral to run POV without splash screen, but here are ways to do something
similar."

>
> I find it inconsequent to want to use the GUI version of POV-Ray (which
> is designed for interactive use) but to not accept that when the program
> is started it displays a splash screen.

I agree sort of. However, is the only reason for displaying the splash
screen to thwart immoral behavior? If so, why put something in front of 99%
of your users* (the morally inclined users) that is intended to stop only 1%
of your users (the immoral users). The moral people don't need to be
reminded, and the immoral will find a way around it anyway.

*these statistics are completely made up. I assume only the rare user tries
to pass POV along as their own creation.

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maybe to bring this unfertile discussion to an end;
I just turned on my old window$ box, downloaded cygwin (of cause only 
the essentials), the generic sources of POVRay and compiled a cygwin'd
command line version without problems, ..., and who has expected it ? NO 
SPLASH SCREEN ;-) just the normal stats (if you don't forget the -D option)

for all of you out there, who are annoyed by the splash screen, the 
whole procedure took less then one hour (90% downloading), ... , and 
imagine how much time you save if you are calling it just through a 
terminal instead of pushing all the graphical gimmicks through the net 
to display it via a VNC client.

... dave

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Christoph Hormann wrote:
> Tim Cook wrote:
> 
>>
>>> I would really appreciate if you'd not spread such misinformation.  
>>> You don't have to click on anything when starting POV-Ray and nearly 
>>> every program i ever used on Windows shows a splash screen when 
>>> starting.
>>
>>
>>
>> I just started a render from Moray, and the splash screen comes up.  
>> POV was in fact running and rendering, but the splash screen was being 
>> displayed.  It does not disappear until you click 'ok'.  Period.
> 
> 
> I repeat: The last POV-Ray version i used on Windows (which is 3.6) does 
> not require you to click on anything when starting it and i have no 
> reason to assume newer version behave differently.  If you think this 
> description is inaccurate you are invited to accurately mention what you 
> observe differently (so it can be checked if this might require a fix) 
> but everything posted on this so far is either bluntly wrong (Darren: 
> "merely refreshing the splash screen adds perhaps five or ten seconds to 
> each frame of animation", Dre: "click ok all the time") or has nothing 
> to do with this (starting renders from Moray).
> 
> Christoph
> 

Yes, most Windows programs have splash screens.  Many (not by any means 
all) allow it to be turned off in the program's options or preferences. 
  After all, when you've already seen it for the 595th time (more or 
less  ;-)  ) it does get rather redundant and boring, even if it does go 
away automatically after a short delay.

And as to:

Christoph Hormann wrote:
 > Well what's obvious is that the only reason you would want to disable
 > the splash screen is to obscure the fact that POV-Ray is called and this
 > it both unethical and illegal.

I don't understand this answer at all.  If I'm running my copy of POVRay 
(or whatever splash-screened program) on my own system, who the h... am 
I going to obscure this fact from???

Finally, I do wish you would tone down some of your answers.  They 
sometimes come across as very condescending and arrogant.  Not always 
nor frequently -- but occasionally.  You are certainly knowledgeable and 
your answers are accurate (you are a POV-team member, right?).  However, 
the way *some* of your responses come across give a very negative 
impression.  I'm sure this is not your intention, but...

I'm also sure you get tired of answering the same old questions by about 
the 156th time, but I think you could exhibit a bit less impatience 
about it.

      -=- Larry -=-

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> When you have a set of scenes
> 
> scene_a.pov
> scene_b.pov
> ...
> scene_x.pov
 >
 > and you want to render them all you can *always* do so, no matter how 
 > large meshes or whatever are generated in those scenes,

Sure, but the per-frame scene files can become really large (several 
100MB!) - POV-Ray has no built-in support for subdivision surfaces, and 
macros are quite slow, so the only way I see is to generate per-frame 
triangle meshes "on the fly" and delete them after the frame has been 
rendered. Perhaps I didn't make that clear in my previous message, but 
the limitation here is disk space, so the size of the meshes does matter 
(imagine 2000 frames with 100MB mesh data per frame - that's 200GB!).

I know that most people use POV-Ray with hand-written SDL code (and use 
its built-in animation features), but still there are cases where you 
want to start rendering on a per-frame basis from an external tool (like 
you do with every other renderer I know) and that's when the splash 
screen becomes rather annoying.

I also think that the average Windows user does not know how to compile 
POV-Ray, let alone writing a GUI extension.

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sascha wrote:
> 
> Sure, but the per-frame scene files can become really large (several 
> 100MB!) - POV-Ray has no built-in support for subdivision surfaces, and 
> macros are quite slow, so the only way I see is to generate per-frame 
> triangle meshes "on the fly" and delete them after the frame has been 
> rendered. Perhaps I didn't make that clear in my previous message, but 
> the limitation here is disk space, so the size of the meshes does matter 
> (imagine 2000 frames with 100MB mesh data per frame - that's 200GB!).

You are aware that you can delete files from SDL (depending 
io-restrictions of course)?  Well - not exactly delete but reduce to 
zero file size.  Just open them with #fopen in write mode.

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Landscape of the week:
http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/ (Last updated 24 Jul. 2005)
MegaPOV with mechanics simulation: http://megapov.inetart.net/

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> You are aware that you can delete files from SDL (depending 
> io-restrictions of course)?  Well - not exactly delete but reduce to 
> zero file size.  Just open them with #fopen in write mode.

Well... So I would start with 200GB mesh data on my disk, and when the 
renderer finished the disk would be nearly empty again.
I can't see how this should help if I don't have 200GB free disk space 
in the first place.

Sure, there are workarounds (the external application could try to 
produce the per-frame data while POV-Ray is still rendering the previous 
frame, and it could even communicate with the POV-Ray-script using 
external files or POV's shell-out option). The point is: this makes 
writing external applications that use POV-Ray merely as a renderer 
unnecessarily complicated.

-sascha

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Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde> wrote:
> Eduardo Bolis wrote:
> > In the Windows version, Can I disable the initial splash window (the same
> > showed by "about" option from help menu.) when I Call POV-Ray from another
> > program?
> > Sorry if it is obvious, but I no find it anywhere.
>
> Well what's obvious is that the only reason you would want to disable
> the splash screen is to obscure the fact that POV-Ray is called and this
> it both unethical and illegal.
>
> You can of course build a console version of POV-Ray that won't generate
> any graphical output.  You can also prevent the splash screen to turn up
> *every* time you invoke POV-Ray by using a GUI extension - QuietPOV
> shows how this can be done:
>
> http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.dreampeach.com/QuietPOV
>
> Christoph
>
> --
> POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Landscape of the week:
> http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/ (Last updated 24 Jul. 2005)
> MegaPOV with mechanics simulation: http://megapov.inetart.net/

It's not my intention to "obscure the fact" that I am using POV-Ray in my
program. My program is texture lab that allow create and test POV-Ray
textures interactively and IN ALL THE PROGRAM CONTEXT "it's obvious" that
it use POV_RAY to show the results. The only reason I want to skip the
Splash Window is time. If the spash screen don't expend extra time, I don't
mind with it.
before you make some "personal comments", you must know if it refletes the
truth, Becouse Confucius said once, "Only the dummies make shure about what
they say".

thanks for your help,

Eduardo.

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