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From: Brent G
Subject: Re: Reducing memory usage
Date: 29 Oct 2003 17:00:10
Message: <3fa0386a@news.povray.org>
Christoph Hormann wrote:

> David Jaquay wrote:
> 
>> While rendering the demo image stackergold.pov, I noticed something I
>> thought was odd.  The memory usage continued to grow as the image 
>> rendered.
>>  In my very-newbie limited-understanding mode, I would have thought that
>> POV would setup all the objects in memory up front, and use them to
>> generate the image as it went along.
> 
> 
> Your description lacks an important thing - what makes you think the 
> memory usage of POV-Ray grows while rendering, i don't know any version 
> of POV that shows the change in memory use while rendering.
> 
> Christoph
> 

*cough* task manager *cough*


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From: Thorsten Froehlich
Subject: Re: Reducing memory usage
Date: 29 Oct 2003 18:31:12
Message: <3fa04dc0@news.povray.org>
In article <web.3f9fec9736065ca65c5446640@news.povray.org> , "David Jaquay"
<dja### [at] yahoocom> wrote:

> While rendering the demo image stackergold.pov, I noticed something I
> thought was odd.  The memory usage continued to grow as the image rendered.
>  In my very-newbie limited-understanding mode, I would have thought that
> POV would setup all the objects in memory up front, and use them to
> generate the image as it went along.
>
> 1) Can someone fill in the blanks for me as to why this behavior is so?

Where do you think the image that is previewed and the messages in the
message window are stored?  And who said there are only objects in the
scene.  Radiosity and photons as well as numerous other things will be
generated while rendering.  All this needs memory.  It is not the plain
scene.

Besides, there is no accurate way for you to track the memory allocated by
POV-Ray, so you should not base any conclusions on the observation from
whatever source you used to determine that the memory allocation of the
application grows.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org


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From: Thorsten Froehlich
Subject: Re: Reducing memory usage
Date: 29 Oct 2003 18:31:59
Message: <3fa04def@news.povray.org>
In article <3fa0386a@news.povray.org> , Brent G <pov### [at] bc-hqcom>  wrote:

> *cough* task manager *cough*

But that doesn't show the memory allocated by the application.  It only
shows the memory used by the application process.  Besides, the user didn't
mention the platform POV-Ray was running on.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org


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From: Brent G
Subject: Re: Reducing memory usage
Date: 29 Oct 2003 19:08:55
Message: <3fa05697$1@news.povray.org>
Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> In article <3fa0386a@news.povray.org> , Brent G <pov### [at] bc-hqcom>  wrote:
> 
> 
>>*cough* task manager *cough*
> 
> 
> But that doesn't show the memory allocated by the application.  It only
> shows the memory used by the application process.  Besides, the user didn't
> mention the platform POV-Ray was running on.
> 
>     Thorsten
> 
> ____________________________________________________
> Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
> e-mail: tho### [at] trfde
> 
> Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

I was merely pointing out that is IS possible


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From: Warp
Subject: Re: Reducing memory usage
Date: 29 Oct 2003 20:29:31
Message: <3fa0697b@news.povray.org>
Thorsten Froehlich <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:
> Radiosity and photons as well as numerous other things will be
> generated while rendering.

  Strictly speaking all photons are generated between the parsing
and the rendering steps, and no new photons are created in the rendering
step...

-- 
plane{-x+y,-1pigment{bozo color_map{[0rgb x][1rgb x+y]}turbulence 1}}
sphere{0,2pigment{rgbt 1}interior{media{emission 1density{spherical
density_map{[0rgb 0][.5rgb<1,.5>][1rgb 1]}turbulence.9}}}scale
<1,1,3>hollow}text{ttf"timrom""Warp".1,0translate<-1,-.1,2>}//  - Warp -


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From: David Jaquay
Subject: Re: Reducing memory usage
Date: 29 Oct 2003 21:20:01
Message: <web.3fa0746dbb9f7a074e8cf70c0@news.povray.org>
Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
>In article <3fa0386a[at]news.povray.org> , Brent G <pov### [at] bc-hqcom>  wrote:
>
>> *cough* task manager *cough*
>
>But that doesn't show the memory allocated by the application.  It only
>shows the memory used by the application process.  Besides, the user didn't
>mention the platform POV-Ray was running on.

This behavior shows up under 'top' on Linux, and task manager under NT; I've
run POV on both platforms.  And indeed, as another post mentioned, this
particular scene uses radiosity, IIRC.

So what about #2, in my original post?  Can I expect to render the image in
halves and get reduced memory usage?  (I suppose I can try it and see, but
I was hoping for an informed opinion, rather than experimental
guesswork...)

Thanks,
Dave


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From: Christopher James Huff
Subject: Re: Reducing memory usage
Date: 29 Oct 2003 22:26:52
Message: <cjameshuff-8E2B5F.22245329102003@netplex.aussie.org>
In article <3fa05697$1@news.povray.org>, Brent G <pov### [at] bc-hqcom> 
wrote:

> Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> > In article <3fa0386a@news.povray.org> , Brent G <pov### [at] bc-hqcom>  wrote:
> > 
> >>*cough* task manager *cough*
> > 
> > But that doesn't show the memory allocated by the application.  It only
> > shows the memory used by the application process.  Besides, the user didn't
> > mention the platform POV-Ray was running on.
> 
> I was merely pointing out that is IS possible

But...your message doesn't do that. The memory allocated to the 
application process is at best a very crude measurement of the memory a 
program is using. This is a common mistake, Christoph's question was 
perfectly valid, as was Thorsten's response.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/


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From: Christoph Hormann
Subject: Re: Reducing memory usage
Date: 30 Oct 2003 04:12:02
Message: <4u0771-t43.ln1@triton.imagico.de>
David Jaquay wrote:
> And indeed, as another post mentioned, this
> particular scene uses radiosity, IIRC.

No, stackerday and stackernight use radiosity, the others not.

> So what about #2, in my original post?  Can I expect to render the image in
> halves and get reduced memory usage?  (I suppose I can try it and see, but
> I was hoping for an informed opinion, rather than experimental
> guesswork...)

I am pretty sure if the observation is correct you can reduce the amount 
of memory shown by the windows task manager by rendering in several 
parts - i can't think of any advantage of this though.

Rendering a scene in several parts is a common method for radiosity 
scenes but this is a completely different topic.

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Sim-POV,
HCR-Edit and more: http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/
Last updated 25 Oct. 2003 _____./\/^>_*_<^\/\.______


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From: Thorsten Froehlich
Subject: Re: Reducing memory usage
Date: 30 Oct 2003 04:25:03
Message: <3fa0d8ef@news.povray.org>
In article <3fa05697$1@news.povray.org> , Brent G <pov### [at] bc-hqcom>  
wrote:

>> But that doesn't show the memory allocated by the application.  It only
>> shows the memory used by the application process.  Besides, the user didn't
>> mention the platform POV-Ray was running on.
>
> I was merely pointing out that is IS possible

See, the catch is that there is a big difference between the memory
allocated by the application for realy use and what the system shows as the
whole amount of memory used by the application.  It may not be clear to a
user, but for the developer it is clear that what the users can see has not
much to do with the realy amount of memory currently allocated by the
application.  As strange as it may sound, the system cannot efficiently
determine how much memory is exactly used by an application.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org


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From: David Jaquay
Subject: Re: Reducing memory usage
Date: 30 Oct 2003 11:25:01
Message: <web.3fa13acabb9f7a075c5446640@news.povray.org>
Christoph Hormann wrote:
>I am pretty sure if the observation is correct you can reduce the amount
>of memory shown by the windows task manager by rendering in several
>parts - i can't think of any advantage of this though.

My thinking was that if my machine has, say, 500MB extra RAM (combining real
and swap space, after the O/S and other stuff is loaded), and an image
takes 600MB RAM total to render, then I'm a bit hosed (w/o a RAM upgrade or
closing other stuff down).  But if I could render in two parts that each
take 400MB, then it's possible (with much swapping, perhaps).  It's my
understanding that as far as the O/S running out of memory, the value that
top or taskman reports actually does matter, regardless of how that memory
is divvied up inside a process.

Or am I way off base (a distinct possibility)?

Dave


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