I'm not sure if this is a POV-Ray/Macintosh or MacMegaPOV problem, so I'll
try here first.

I am trying to run a rather long animation job (750 frames) on my G5
workstation (OS X 10.2.7, *not* Panther) using MacMegaPOV Carbon 1.0, and
without fail the job poops out after rendering 63 frames. I have the start
and end frames set to 638 and 1388 respectively, but after 63 frames
MacMegaPOV crashes and dies.

I learned a long time ago on the Windows version of regular (unpatched)
POV-Ray to not run a long animation batch inside POV-Ray because it doesn't
release the memory it allocates before starting another frame. Instead, I
run POV-Ray from the command line and feed it one frame at a time, thereby
ensuring that POV-Ray releases any allocated memory as it exits after
rendering each frame (my model uses a *lot* of texture, image and bump maps
and consumes 500+ MB of memory to render 1 frame). But since there is no
command line in Macintosh, I don't see any other alternative than to run
animation jobs inside MacMegaPOV.

Any suggestions??

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 11:53:09 -0500, "Scott Gammans"
<dee### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> Any suggestions??

Waiting for MacMegaPOV maintainer, I would suggest as follow:
Try it again with no other software run. Does it stop each time on pure OS?
If yes try to make as minimal as possible your scene when this behaviour
occur. If you have any access to other platform (you mentioned Windows) try to
run your scene there with WinMegaPOV. Describe your results then.

ABX

Post a reply to this message

In article <3fa141f5$1@news.povray.org> , "Scott Gammans" 
<dee### [at] yahoocom> wrote:

> I learned a long time ago on the Windows version of regular (unpatched)
> POV-Ray to not run a long animation batch inside POV-Ray because it doesn't
> release the memory it allocates before starting another frame.

This simply is incorrect, but I know you don't care that I tell you.  Still,
incorrect information posted tends to stick in new users' minds longer than
correct information, so if nobody says it isn't so they will take it as
true...

    Thorsten

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

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

Post a reply to this message

Scott Gammans wrote:
> I'm not sure if this is a POV-Ray/Macintosh or MacMegaPOV problem, so I'll
> try here first.
> 
> I am trying to run a rather long animation job (750 frames) on my G5
> workstation (OS X 10.2.7, *not* Panther) using MacMegaPOV Carbon 1.0, and
> without fail the job poops out after rendering 63 frames. I have the start
> and end frames set to 638 and 1388 respectively, but after 63 frames
> MacMegaPOV crashes and dies.

Does it crash always after 63 frames even if you render a different 
subset or even identical frames?  Try removing all uses of MegaPOV 
features and render with official POV.

Christoph

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

Post a reply to this message

Scott Gammans <dee### [at] yahoocom> wrote:

> I am trying to run a rather long animation job (750 frames) on my G5
> workstation (OS X 10.2.7, *not* Panther) using MacMegaPOV Carbon 1.0, and
> without fail the job poops out after rendering 63 frames. I have the start
> and end frames set to 638 and 1388 respectively, but after 63 frames
> MacMegaPOV crashes and dies.
I can not give you an answer right now but I will start such an
animation an see what it does.
Is it something you can repeat or is it with one specific scene?
 If so, send that scene to me if that is possible for you.

> I learned a long time ago on the Windows version of regular (unpatched)
> POV-Ray to not run a long animation batch inside POV-Ray because it doesn't
> release the memory it allocates before starting another frame. Instead, I
Even if that were to be true (but it is not) you would not notice this
so soon on OS X.
You would need a scene which uses a *huge* amount of memory.
If you want to verify this you can run top in the terminal and watch
memory consumption for MegaPOV.

> run POV-Ray from the command line and feed it one frame at a time, thereby
> ensuring that POV-Ray releases any allocated memory as it exits after
> rendering each frame (my model uses a *lot* of texture, image and bump maps
> and consumes 500+ MB of memory to render 1 frame). But since there is no
> command line in Macintosh, I don't see any other alternative than to run
> animation jobs inside MacMegaPOV.
Command line on a Mac..... Are you serious ? ;-) :-)
If you wait for MegaPOV 1.1 you will be able to compile such a version
without any problems.
There are indeed quite a few people interested for such a version.
 
> Any suggestions??
More info? First thing to know is if this happens with a simple scene as
well.
That is always the first step.

Yvo


-- 
MacMegaPOV at:
http://users.skynet.be/smellenbergh

E-mail: yvo### [at] gmxnet

Post a reply to this message

Scott Gammans <dee### [at] yahoocom> wrote:

[...]

> I am trying to run a rather long animation job (750 frames) on my G5
> workstation (OS X 10.2.7, *not* Panther) using MacMegaPOV Carbon 1.0, and
> without fail the job poops out after rendering 63 frames. I have the start
> and end frames set to 638 and 1388 respectively, but after 63 frames
> MacMegaPOV crashes and dies.
Your animation counts 750 frames but you start with frame 638 and end
with 1388?
Please what have you entered in 'Initial Frame', 'Final Frame', 'Subset
Start' and 'Subset end' on the clock panel of the prefrences dialog?

Yvo

-- 
MacMegaPOV at:
http://users.skynet.be/smellenbergh

E-mail: yvo### [at] gmxnet

Post a reply to this message

> Please what have you entered in 'Initial Frame', 'Final Frame', 'Subset
> Start' and 'Subset end' on the clock panel of the prefrences dialog?

638
1388
638
1388

"Yvo Smellenbergh" <yvo### [at] gmxnet> wrote in message
news:1g3npev.ecvzfx1qaqy2aN%yvos.s@gmx.net...
> Scott Gammans <dee### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > I am trying to run a rather long animation job (750 frames) on my G5
> > workstation (OS X 10.2.7, *not* Panther) using MacMegaPOV Carbon 1.0,
and
> > without fail the job poops out after rendering 63 frames. I have the
start
> > and end frames set to 638 and 1388 respectively, but after 63 frames
> > MacMegaPOV crashes and dies.
> Your animation counts 750 frames but you start with frame 638 and end
> with 1388?
> Please what have you entered in 'Initial Frame', 'Final Frame', 'Subset
> Start' and 'Subset end' on the clock panel of the prefrences dialog?
>
> Yvo
>
> -- 
> MacMegaPOV at:
> http://users.skynet.be/smellenbergh
>
> E-mail: yvo### [at] gmxnet

Post a reply to this message

*sigh* No, Thorsten, I do care what you have to say--but let's not get into
another argument about your manner of online writing.

I may be wrong about what is causing the problem, but POV-Ray for Windows
*does* have some sort of memory allocation problem that, after a few dozen
frames, causes it to stop rendering with a memory allocation error because
it can't allocate any more memory to open one of the TGA bump map files in
my scene. I know it's not the most accurate measurement tool, but the
Windows XP Task Manager clearly shows POV-Ray consuming more and more memory
as each frame is rendered, until all physical memory is consumed and it
starts thrashing the virtual memory. When that also runs out, POV-Ray stops.
So it's either POV-Ray not releasing allocated memory after a frame is
completed, or it's a memory leak, or a problem with the way Windows XP
allocates memory to programs, or a little of all the above. And with a scene
file that takes nearly 600 MB of memory to render for one frame, it doesn't
take long for my workstation to grind to a halt when running a long
animation sequence totally from within POV-Ray.

To get around this problem--WHATEVER the reason for it--I figured out a long
time ago that if I execute POV-Ray from a batch file and render one frame at
a time from the command line, e.g....

pvengine +Iscene.pov +H384 +W512 +Q9 +KFI638 +KFF638 +Oscene_.png -D /NR
/EXIT
pvengine +Iscene.pov +H384 +W512 +Q9 +KFI639 +KFF639 +Oscene_.png -D /NR
/EXIT
pvengine +Iscene.pov +H384 +W512 +Q9 +KFI640 +KFF640 +Oscene_.png -D /NR
/EXIT

...POV-Ray always behaves perfectly and never is unable to parse a scene
file because it can't allocate the memory. The key is telling POV-Ray to
/EXIT after rendering one frame--that seems to force it to release any
memory it allocated back to Windows.

You will never be able to convince me that there is no problem with
long-running, memory-intensive animation jobs in POV-Ray, Thorsten, because
I've seen it happen.

"Thorsten Froehlich" <tho### [at] trfde> wrote in message
news:3fa14a7b@news.povray.org...
> In article <3fa141f5$1@news.povray.org> , "Scott Gammans"
> <dee### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
>
> > I learned a long time ago on the Windows version of regular (unpatched)
> > POV-Ray to not run a long animation batch inside POV-Ray because it
doesn't
> > release the memory it allocates before starting another frame.
>
> This simply is incorrect, but I know you don't care that I tell you.
Still,
> incorrect information posted tends to stick in new users' minds longer
than
> correct information, so if nobody says it isn't so they will take it as
> true...
>
>     Thorsten
>
> ____________________________________________________
> Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
> e-mail: tho### [at] trfde
>
> Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

Post a reply to this message

By the way, my newsreader inserted carriage return/line feeds in my example
command line script below where I didn't want them... the script looks sorta
like this:

pvengine +Iscene.pov +H384 ... +KFI638 +KFF638 +Oscene_.png -D /NR /EXIT
pvengine +Iscene.pov +H384 ... +KFI639 +KFF639 +Oscene_.png -D /NR /EXIT
pvengine +Iscene.pov +H384 ... +KFI640 +KFF640 +Oscene_.png -D /NR /EXIT

"Scott Gammans" <dee### [at] yahoocom> wrote in message
news:3fa168a4$1@news.povray.org...
> *sigh* No, Thorsten, I do care what you have to say--but let's not get
into
> another argument about your manner of online writing.
>
> I may be wrong about what is causing the problem, but POV-Ray for Windows
> *does* have some sort of memory allocation problem that, after a few dozen
> frames, causes it to stop rendering with a memory allocation error because
> it can't allocate any more memory to open one of the TGA bump map files in
> my scene. I know it's not the most accurate measurement tool, but the
> Windows XP Task Manager clearly shows POV-Ray consuming more and more
memory
> as each frame is rendered, until all physical memory is consumed and it
> starts thrashing the virtual memory. When that also runs out, POV-Ray
stops.
> So it's either POV-Ray not releasing allocated memory after a frame is
> completed, or it's a memory leak, or a problem with the way Windows XP
> allocates memory to programs, or a little of all the above. And with a
scene
> file that takes nearly 600 MB of memory to render for one frame, it
doesn't
> take long for my workstation to grind to a halt when running a long
> animation sequence totally from within POV-Ray.
>
> To get around this problem--WHATEVER the reason for it--I figured out a
long
> time ago that if I execute POV-Ray from a batch file and render one frame
at
> a time from the command line, e.g....
>
> pvengine +Iscene.pov +H384 +W512 +Q9 +KFI638 +KFF638 +Oscene_.png -D /NR
> /EXIT
> pvengine +Iscene.pov +H384 +W512 +Q9 +KFI639 +KFF639 +Oscene_.png -D /NR
> /EXIT
> pvengine +Iscene.pov +H384 +W512 +Q9 +KFI640 +KFF640 +Oscene_.png -D /NR
> /EXIT
>
> ...POV-Ray always behaves perfectly and never is unable to parse a scene
> file because it can't allocate the memory. The key is telling POV-Ray to
> /EXIT after rendering one frame--that seems to force it to release any
> memory it allocated back to Windows.
>
> You will never be able to convince me that there is no problem with
> long-running, memory-intensive animation jobs in POV-Ray, Thorsten,
because
> I've seen it happen.
>
> "Thorsten Froehlich" <tho### [at] trfde> wrote in message
> news:3fa14a7b@news.povray.org...
> > In article <3fa141f5$1@news.povray.org> , "Scott Gammans"
> > <dee### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> >
> > > I learned a long time ago on the Windows version of regular
(unpatched)
> > > POV-Ray to not run a long animation batch inside POV-Ray because it
> doesn't
> > > release the memory it allocates before starting another frame.
> >
> > This simply is incorrect, but I know you don't care that I tell you.
> Still,
> > incorrect information posted tends to stick in new users' minds longer
> than
> > correct information, so if nobody says it isn't so they will take it as
> > true...
> >
> >     Thorsten
> >
> > ____________________________________________________
> > Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
> > e-mail: tho### [at] trfde
> >
> > Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org
>
>

Post a reply to this message

Yes, it's any 63 frames of the same basic scene file, and with the exception
of Finder and whatever services are started when OS X boots up, I'm not
running any other processes.

I'm not using any MegaPOV features at all; the only reason I'm using
MacMegaPOV is the unavailability of POV-Ray for Macintosh on OS X 10.2.x.

This is a straight, standard POV-Ray *.POV file that includes seven *.INC
files and loads about 45 MB of *.PNG and *.TGA image, bump and texture map
files. Total memory used for each frame is about 550 MB.

thanks...

"Christoph Hormann" <chr### [at] gmxde> wrote in message
news:s0u### [at] tritonimagicode...
> Scott Gammans wrote:
> > I'm not sure if this is a POV-Ray/Macintosh or MacMegaPOV problem, so
I'll
> > try here first.
> >
> > I am trying to run a rather long animation job (750 frames) on my G5
> > workstation (OS X 10.2.7, *not* Panther) using MacMegaPOV Carbon 1.0,
and
> > without fail the job poops out after rendering 63 frames. I have the
start
> > and end frames set to 638 and 1388 respectively, but after 63 frames
> > MacMegaPOV crashes and dies.
>
> Does it crash always after 63 frames even if you render a different
> subset or even identical frames?  Try removing all uses of MegaPOV
> features and render with official POV.
>
> Christoph
>
> -- 
> POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Sim-POV,
> HCR-Edit and more: http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/
> Last updated 25 Oct. 2003 _____./\/^>_*_<^\/\.______
>

Post a reply to this message