I'm tossing around ideas for a .NET programming contest.  One idea was to
build a distributed POV system based on .NET.  I've seen quite a few systems
that do this with other architectures.  In my random thoughts so far, I've
come across two potential problems.  If anyone can offer any advice I would
really appreciate it:

1)  I know it's possible to render parts of an image using command line
switches.  However, if I send parts of a picture to different computers,
this is going to mess up anti-aliasing, correct?  I suppose this could be
avoided by post-processing.  Or is there a way to do anti-aliasing in this
situation?

2)  Do I need to write my own routines to stitch the picture back together,
or is there any easy way to accomplish this?

3)  I would like to support any platform that can run Povray.  What is the
best way to tell POV to render a file?  Should I just pass it a command
line?  If that's the case, are all the command lines the same across
platforms or would I need separate commands for Linus, Windows, etc.?

Thank you for any help,
-Ben
http://bwmartens.tripod.com

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> 1)  I know it's possible to render parts of an image using command
line
> switches.  However, if I send parts of a picture to different
computers,
> this is going to mess up anti-aliasing, correct?  I suppose this could
be
> avoided by post-processing.  Or is there a way to do anti-aliasing in
this
> situation?

Antialiasing won't get messed up, but radiosity will.

> 2)  Do I need to write my own routines to stitch the picture back
together,
> or is there any easy way to accomplish this?

It's probably easiest if you write the routines yourself.  To make it
nice and easy, I would suggest making POV output an uncompressed bitmap.

> 3)  I would like to support any platform that can run Povray.  What is
the
> best way to tell POV to render a file?  Should I just pass it a
command
> line?  If that's the case, are all the command lines the same across
> platforms or would I need separate commands for Linus, Windows, etc.?

I believe they are all the same, with the possible exception of display
parameters (?).  All the important ones are the same, anyway.

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In article <3be3bb7f$1@news.povray.org> , "Andrew" 
<ast### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:

>> 3)  I would like to support any platform that can run Povray.  What is
> the
>> best way to tell POV to render a file?  Should I just pass it a
> command
>> line?  If that's the case, are all the command lines the same across
>> platforms or would I need separate commands for Linus, Windows, etc.?
>
> I believe they are all the same, with the possible exception of display
> parameters (?).  All the important ones are the same, anyway.

Macs don't have a command line...


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

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

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I don't believe this is a really good idea, splitting a render into
stripes an rendering each separately on different machines is a task
easily to fulfill with a script and ssh/telnet/... Techniques like
adapting the size of the stripes to the individual computers would be a
bit more work, but it would be much more flexible with common tools than
with a proprietary system.

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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On Sat, 3 Nov 2001 09:40:20 -0000, "Andrew"
<ast### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:

A distribuited povray is really a good idea, and it should be easy to
do too... But if U want to do such tool you should consider using
java, as it's really portable...
To pass options to Pov I believe you should use the command line
switches, for radiosity I think that it's just necessary to calculate
it once with a single cpu and to store the radiosity info before
calculating strips (if I can remember well this is possible with
povray, or am I just dreaming??)
You should subdivide rendering into strips that are small but not so
small that the parse time will slow down the image rendering to much.
Small stripes let you avoid the problem that even with a network of
identical computer some could finish too early and became idle. The
best way to manage everything is to have a shared directory for the
scripts/renderstripes/radios.info, a server program that manages the
process and many clients...
The server program could hot-plug new machines if required or
deconnect some if needed, it could also manage more than one rendering
at a time, balance workload, integrate stripes in the final image,
check if a computer "dies" (software or hardware problem) and reassing
its render-strip to another processor

>> 1)  I know it's possible to render parts of an image using command
>line
>> switches.  However, if I send parts of a picture to different
>computers,
>> this is going to mess up anti-aliasing, correct?  I suppose this could
>be
>> avoided by post-processing.  Or is there a way to do anti-aliasing in
>this
>> situation?
>
>Antialiasing won't get messed up, but radiosity will.
>
>> 2)  Do I need to write my own routines to stitch the picture back
>together,
>> or is there any easy way to accomplish this?
>
>It's probably easiest if you write the routines yourself.  To make it
>nice and easy, I would suggest making POV output an uncompressed bitmap.
>
>> 3)  I would like to support any platform that can run Povray.  What is
>the
>> best way to tell POV to render a file?  Should I just pass it a
>command
>> line?  If that's the case, are all the command lines the same across
>> platforms or would I need separate commands for Linus, Windows, etc.?
>
>I believe they are all the same, with the possible exception of display
>parameters (?).  All the important ones are the same, anyway.
>
>

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