Hello all,

I'm a relative newbie here (but an experienced programmer and
composer). I've been using POVray for a while, and now have some
animations that are taking 2-3 days per frame (for an example of a
simple frame, see http://HeavenEverywhere.com/Sc1gNew.png; the
project file is in http://HeavenEverywhere.com/Sc1g2.pov and
requires the MegaPOV include files in your .ini).

The scenes use multiple moving light sources, and various lenses and
bodies of simulated water with reflection and refraction. To really
slow things down, I also want the lenses to be out of focus using
aperture effects (which are turned off in thye example frame above).

My question is, are there faster ray-tracers that run on simple
networks (like 3-6 InteliMacs in a lab)? (Parallel POVray is still M$-
Windoze-only.) I've looked into Tachyon, but its scene description
language looks really primitive compared to POVray, and I'm uncertain
as to whether it's still being developed. I've also found Radiance, Lux
and MPV, but can't determine which scales best.

So many of the web references I find are really stale.
Where is this discussion taking place?
Are there other sites or lists for up-to-date info?

......any reply appreciated...

Stephen Pope
UCSB

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"StephenPope" <stp### [at] createucsbedu> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I'm a relative newbie here (but an experienced programmer and
> composer). I've been using POVray for a while, and now have some
> animations that are taking 2-3 days per frame (for an example of a
> simple frame, see http://HeavenEverywhere.com/Sc1gNew.png; the
> project file is in http://HeavenEverywhere.com/Sc1g2.pov and
> requires the MegaPOV include files in your .ini).
>
> The scenes use multiple moving light sources, and various lenses and
> bodies of simulated water with reflection and refraction. To really
> slow things down, I also want the lenses to be out of focus using
> aperture effects (which are turned off in thye example frame above).
>
> My question is, are there faster ray-tracers that run on simple
> networks (like 3-6 InteliMacs in a lab)? (Parallel POVray is still M$-
> Windoze-only.) I've looked into Tachyon, but its scene description
> language looks really primitive compared to POVray, and I'm uncertain
> as to whether it's still being developed. I've also found Radiance, Lux
> and MPV, but can't determine which scales best.
>
> So many of the web references I find are really stale.
> Where is this discussion taking place?
> Are there other sites or lists for up-to-date info?
>
> ......any reply appreciated...
>
> Stephen Pope
> UCSB

Sorry -- to make the link above work, drop the trailing ";" as in

    http://HeavenEverywhere.com/Sc1gNew.png

stp

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StephenPope napsal(a):
> "StephenPope" <stp### [at] createucsbedu> wrote:
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I'm a relative newbie here (but an experienced programmer and
>> composer). I've been using POVray for a while, and now have some
>> animations that are taking 2-3 days per frame (for an example of a
>> simple frame, see http://HeavenEverywhere.com/Sc1gNew.png; the
>> project file is in http://HeavenEverywhere.com/Sc1g2.pov and
>> requires the MegaPOV include files in your .ini).
>>
>> The scenes use multiple moving light sources, and various lenses and
>> bodies of simulated water with reflection and refraction. To really
>> slow things down, I also want the lenses to be out of focus using
>> aperture effects (which are turned off in thye example frame above).
>>
>> My question is, are there faster ray-tracers that run on simple
>> networks (like 3-6 InteliMacs in a lab)? (Parallel POVray is still M$-
>> Windoze-only.) I've looked into Tachyon, but its scene description
>> language looks really primitive compared to POVray, and I'm uncertain
>> as to whether it's still being developed. I've also found Radiance, Lux
>> and MPV, but can't determine which scales best.
>>
>> So many of the web references I find are really stale.
>> Where is this discussion taking place?
>> Are there other sites or lists for up-to-date info?
>>
>> ......any reply appreciated...
>>
>> Stephen Pope
>> UCSB
> 
> Sorry -- to make the link above work, drop the trailing ";" as in
> 
>     http://HeavenEverywhere.com/Sc1gNew.png
> 
> stp
> 
> 
> 
> 
My idea:
trace frames 0,10,20,30... on PC 1, frames 1,11,21... on PC 2 etc.
You can do this by using frame_step megapov option.

Post a reply to this message

Jan Dvorak <jan### [at] centrumcz> wrote:
> trace frames 0,10,20,30... on PC 1, frames 1,11,21... on PC 2 etc.

  Wouldn't it be simpler to simply trace eg. frames 0-9 in PC 1, 10-19
in PC 2, etc?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

> Hello all,
> 
> I'm a relative newbie here (but an experienced programmer and
> composer). I've been using POVray for a while, and now have some
> animations that are taking 2-3 days per frame (for an example of a
> simple frame, see http://HeavenEverywhere.com/Sc1gNew.png; the
> project file is in http://HeavenEverywhere.com/Sc1g2.pov and
> requires the MegaPOV include files in your .ini).

Well, I have a little renderfarm I could let you use, but it has POV-Ray 
3.6, not MegaPOV. I never got round to merging my renderfarm-related 
code changes with MegaPOV code...

The #set statements could be replaced with normal #declare as far as I 
know, but I don't think you have a non-megapov alternative to glow{}.

Post a reply to this message

StephenPope nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2007/11/04 10:10:
> Hello all,
> 
> I'm a relative newbie here (but an experienced programmer and
> composer). I've been using POVray for a while, and now have some
> animations that are taking 2-3 days per frame (for an example of a
> simple frame, see http://HeavenEverywhere.com/Sc1gNew.png; the
> project file is in http://HeavenEverywhere.com/Sc1g2.pov and
> requires the MegaPOV include files in your .ini).
> 
> The scenes use multiple moving light sources, and various lenses and
> bodies of simulated water with reflection and refraction. To really
> slow things down, I also want the lenses to be out of focus using
> aperture effects (which are turned off in thye example frame above).
> 
> My question is, are there faster ray-tracers that run on simple
> networks (like 3-6 InteliMacs in a lab)? (Parallel POVray is still M$-
> Windoze-only.) I've looked into Tachyon, but its scene description
> language looks really primitive compared to POVray, and I'm uncertain
> as to whether it's still being developed. I've also found Radiance, Lux
> and MPV, but can't determine which scales best.
> 
> So many of the web references I find are really stale.
> Where is this discussion taking place?
> Are there other sites or lists for up-to-date info?
> 
> ......any reply appreciated...
> 
> Stephen Pope
> UCSB
> 
> 
Some things that may help make it render faster, some can alter the aspect.

For the plates, merge all differenced sylinders together, it gives you less 
overlaping bounding boxes: Now you have 31 overlaping bounding boxes for each 
plates, this can reduce the number to only 2.
(This will change the aspect of the holes) Bind the cylinders in a blob, set the 
treshold to a small value like 0.01 or a little smaler to minimise the rounding 
of the edges between the cyinder components. Blob's bounding may be advantagous 
in this case.

You can try to increase the value for adc_bailout. The default is 1/256, you can 
try 1/100. It will have some effect, principaly in the darker areas where you 
may stop before going trough all surfaces.

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
You know you've been raytracing too long when you know how to render a truly 
photorealistic compact disc, and you're not going to tell anyone
(least of all a POV user  ;)  ).
     -- Alex McLeod a.k.a. Giant Robot Messiah

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On Sun, 04 Nov 2007 11:01:05 -0500, Warp wrote:

> Jan Dvorak <jan### [at] centrumcz> wrote:
>> trace frames 0,10,20,30... on PC 1, frames 1,11,21... on PC 2 etc.
> 
>   Wouldn't it be simpler to simply trace eg. frames 0-9 in PC 1, 10-19
> in PC 2, etc?

Perhaps, but if you have 'n' machines, and render frames 1 through n-1 
simultaneously, then you can have a look to see if the first n frames 
animate properly.  If you do 1-n on one, n+1-2n on the next, then you 
have to wait for the first machine to finish all of its frames before 
combining them into an animation.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> On Sun, 04 Nov 2007 11:01:05 -0500, Warp wrote:
>
> > Jan Dvorak <jan### [at] centrumcz> wrote:
> >> trace frames 0,10,20,30... on PC 1, frames 1,11,21... on PC 2 etc.
> >
> >   Wouldn't it be simpler to simply trace eg. frames 0-9 in PC 1, 10-19
> > in PC 2, etc?
>
> Perhaps, but if you have 'n' machines, and render frames 1 through n-1
> simultaneously, then you can have a look to see if the first n frames
> animate properly.  If you do 1-n on one, n+1-2n on the next, then you
> have to wait for the first machine to finish all of its frames before
> combining them into an animation.
>
> Jim


Or, here's another approach:  Let all machines go at once & let SDL create "flag
files" and either render blank (read "easily sorted out") images or real frames
depending on whether a given frame number's "flag file" exists already or not.
 It's an SDL only approach.  It may be crude but it's funtional and all PC's
will finish around the same time.  It basically requires each machine (or
instance of POV-Ray) to have it's own unique output location, and for all
machines (or instances of POV-Ray) to have read/write access to a shared
network directory.

Demo scene for "SimpleNetAnimator":
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.scene-files/thread/%3Cweb.4668e8cb265a91e39e4bf5850@news.povray.org%3E/

Or here is "SimpleNetAnimator"  although I think what's in the first link is
actually a little more updated:
http://news.povray.org/./povray.binaries.scene-files/thread/%3Cweb.45b9a29a2c9faeaa9356f54f0%40news.povray.org%3E/

One interesting thing that happens when using this approach is that each
machine's reported pixels-per-second will indicate the average overall
performance of the cluster.

Charles


PS If you consolidate the good frames during processing, it's *very* important
to not consolidate them in one of the output directories.... If you happen to
have that machine crash and then re-start the rendering, it's too easy for that
machine to over-write hundreds of good frames with emty ones! :P

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I'm still looking for any comments at all about alternatives to POV-Ray.

Are there faster ray tracers out there?

Is POV-Ray the fastest?

Do any others have as good scene description languages as POV-Ray?

Do any support clusters of SMP Intel Macs?


stp

Post a reply to this message

> I'm still looking for any comments at all about alternatives to POV-Ray.
> 
> Are there faster ray tracers out there?
> 
> Is POV-Ray the fastest?
> 
> Do any others have as good scene description languages as POV-Ray?
> 
> Do any support clusters of SMP Intel Macs?
> 

Raytracers are *different*. I can get you a raytracer that is faster and 
has half the features, or produces much lower quality images.

If there was a raytracer that was *exactly* like POV-Ray with the only 
difference of being faster, POV-Ray wouldn't exist, don't you think?

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