"peyrol" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> I could not find a command line switch for, nor any mention of, periodically
> saving the image to a file while rendering it. Is this done automatically? I'm
> not talking about animation. I'm talking about rendering a single very high
> resolution image.
>
> I see how to initiate a controlled abort, and how to resume where you left off
> later. What I'm not sure about is how to resume from a power outage, which would
> effectively be an uncontrolled abort. If POVray provides no way to periodically
> and automatically save what has been rendered so far to a file, that does not
> bode well. Please tell me I am wrong about this. Thanks for any clue.

I am rather new to POV-Ray compared to all the gurus around here, but here is
what I believe:
POV-Ray allows you to use the +C command line, which means "Continue Trace"
to start rendering from an interrupted render BUT it doesn't do so by starting
from an image since there are numerous other things involved besides pixel in a
frame's process, such as photons and their gathering pre calulated before them,
so instead, POV regularly saves its state of the scenes calculation, including
what was necessary to build it so far, and to refine it later if some new light
bounces in unrendered pixels require the previous bounces occured elsewhere.
This file would be very big but temporary, and not be deleted until image is
fully rendered, (or the whole animation?). that way, if you turn off your
computer and start rendering again from empty pov editor with "+C" the scene
will just go on rendering.

Am I correct so far guys?


About what you ask that is, saving pixels progressively, I for one would be
interested to know whether it's possible because that's one of the defaults of
Blender/POV-Ray integration: since I don't know where pixels are, when we
interrupt a render, the image simply disappears from editors while with other
renderers in Blender, you get to keep what has been rendered so far, so you can
still use it e.g. to patch another image or just compare. I also believe the
real time rendering process could more easily be made available to Blender
editor with this feature.

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