I have started to work on a tool set for distributed rendering with 
POV-Ray.  It is written with the following goals in mind:

- portability.
- non-interactive use, both the client and the manager tool can run in 
background.
- extendability, the tools can be easily modified to individual 
requirements and additional tools can be integrated.
- simple design, easy installation.

Right now it consists of two shell scripts (client and project manager) 
and a C-program to combine partial renders.  It only supports still 
renders at the moment and the data is exchanged via a workspace 
directory all computers need to have access to (so for internet-wide 
distribution you will need a VPN system).  The tiling program at the 
moment only supports the PPM format.  The main reason for this is that 
this simplifies the combination of the files and no additional libraries 
are required for the program.

More information can be found on my website:

http://www.tu-bs.de/%7Ey0013390/povany/index.html


Note this project is just a few days old at the moment so there might 
still be a lot of things that don't work as expected.  Feel encouraged 
to tell about any problems.  Also feel free to develop additional tools 
to be integrated into the project, i could think of things like:

- a frontend to add render projects
- a tool to generate render statistics
- a tool to exchange the files through other transports like email, ftp, ...

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Sim-POV,
HCR-Edit and more: http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/
Last updated 11 Jan. 2004 _____./\/^>_*_<^\/\.______

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