Hi Ho,

thought I posted this last night from home, but I can't see it on the
server this morning (at work)...

I'm rendering a simple animation: a single object, a lightsource and a
skysphere to become an QTVR object movie... the object in question is a
CSG of planes (a variant on the 'tesseract' on my home page
www.tesseract.com.au - is only 56k so it should load reasonably
quickly - yes, I read the CSG of Planes thread too), but the symptoms
remain when a hexagon patterned (pigments only) sphere is used instead.

A typical frame renders in under 30 seconds. If I leave POV rendering
frames, by the time it's done 50 that's become a minute, by 300 frames
it's more like 4 minutes. Quitting, re-launching and re-rendering the
*same* frame shows that it's not a difference between frames causing the
slowdown (time drops to about 30seconds again).

In the original render decay thread Ken someone (not Tyler) commented
that as far as he knew it was a Windows only problem - not so: 3.1g on a
PowerMac (sys 8.6 qt 4.0, 30MB RAM allocated to POV-Ray - using nowhere
near this much, other apps open but idle (i.e. should be constant load))

Anyone got a solution other than rendering in small batches with quits
between? Even a suggestion that may reduce the effect? (caching more
image rows??)

By the way:
Parsing time also increases (the scene file has some declares and an
include with declares, but everything in it remains constant between
frames other than the rotation of the object - parsing time should be
constantly under 0.1 seconds).

Also noticed that 0+0.1=2, 2+0.1=3, 3+0.1=4 in parsing times for
consecutive frames.

(if not then time to write an applescript....)

Have Fun
Martin
--
<Spa### [at] tesseractcomau> is a valid address
If you prefer mnemonic addresses you can use:
<Martin 'at' tesseract.com.au> or <Martin.Crisp 'at' Tourism.tas.gov.au>

My opinions should not be taken as indicative of Tourism Tasmania's
opinions

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On Thu, 1 Jul 1999 10:56:47 +1000, "Martin Crisp"
<Spa### [at] tesseractcomau> wrote:

>Hi Ho,
>
>thought I posted this last night from home, but I can't see it on the
>server this morning (at work)...
>
[snip]
>A typical frame renders in under 30 seconds. If I leave POV rendering
>frames, by the time it's done 50 that's become a minute, by 300 frames
>it's more like 4 minutes. Quitting, re-launching and re-rendering the
>*same* frame shows that it's not a difference between frames causing the
>slowdown (time drops to about 30seconds again).
>
>In the original render decay thread Ken someone (not Tyler) commented
>that as far as he knew it was a Windows only problem - not so: 3.1g on a
>PowerMac (sys 8.6 qt 4.0, 30MB RAM allocated to POV-Ray - using nowhere
>near this much, other apps open but idle (i.e. should be constant load))
>
IMHO it sounds like the Mac you're using has enough similarities to
Windoze to suffer some similar problems. I'd imagine that there's some
grabage management/memory management that's suffering slowdown because
POV isn't releasing enough CPU power to the OS. If I'm roughly right
then the only way to improve consistency would be to lower your
render's priority - which may or may not end up in a slower overall
render time.

Myself I render in batches partly because a lot of my frames take
hours to render. I have .ini file settings which allow one PC to work
on a hundred frames or so while another PC works on a different
subset.


Cheers,

Cliff Bowman
Why not pay my 3D Dr Who site a visit at
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dimension/7855/
PS change ".duffnet" to ".net" if replying via e-mail

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Cliff Bowman wrote in message <377b93bf.459452@news.povray.org>...
>On Thu, 1 Jul 1999 10:56:47 +1000, "Martin Crisp"
><Spa### [at] tesseractcomau> wrote:
>
>>Hi Ho,
>>
>>thought I posted this last night from home, but I can't see it on the
>>server this morning (at work)...
>>
>[snip]
>>A typical frame renders in under 30 seconds. If I leave POV rendering
>>frames, by the time it's done 50 that's become a minute, by 300 frames
>>it's more like 4 minutes. Quitting, re-launching and re-rendering the
>>*same* frame shows that it's not a difference between frames causing
the
>>slowdown (time drops to about 30seconds again).
>>
>>In the original render decay thread Ken someone (not Tyler) commented
>>that as far as he knew it was a Windows only problem - not so: 3.1g on
a
>>PowerMac (sys 8.6 qt 4.0, 30MB RAM allocated to POV-Ray - using
nowhere
>>near this much, other apps open but idle (i.e. should be constant
load))
>>
>IMHO it sounds like the Mac you're using has enough similarities to
>Windoze to suffer some similar problems. I'd imagine that there's some
>grabage management/memory management that's suffering slowdown because
>POV isn't releasing enough CPU power to the OS. If I'm roughly right

Hmm, no offence but I doubt it (but I'll fiddle over the weekend and
followup if I find anything). When I say other apps:
SETI@home (not launched but it's control panel has the mac equivalent of
a TSR set to do nothing unless machine is idle for 4 hours - since it
doesn't consider CPU load in it's 'idle' calculations DUH! It shouldn't
be pulling more than a tick or three every minute or so)
Stickies (not exactly a high CPU load)
Finder (idle, hidden, also not a high load.)
The menubar clock (which seems to get a cycle every 2 seconds or so when
POV's throttle is set to 'tyrannical'.)

>then the only way to improve consistency would be to lower your
>render's priority - which may or may not end up in a slower overall
>render time.
>
>Myself I render in batches partly because a lot of my frames take
>hours to render. I have .ini file settings which allow one PC to work
>on a hundred frames or so while another PC works on a different
>subset.

Haven't really played with .ini files (briefly looked like I'd get
*free* access to a network of boxes in the States that I could use as a
render farm, but that's fallen through :-(). Haven't looked at the
scriptability that Eduard & co have put into the Mac version, but I'll
probably take that route if I want to set up an all-mac render farm
(yeah, probably easier using .ini files, but with luck I'll get finer
control about which machines get which frames from AppleScript - and I'm
fairly comfortable with AS too...)

Thanks for the comment, will advise if I can narrow down an 'optimum'...

Have Fun
Martin
--
<Spa### [at] tesseractcomau> is a valid address
If you prefer mnemonic addresses you can use:
<Martin 'at' tesseract.com.au> or <Martin.Crisp 'at' Tourism.tas.gov.au>

My opinions should not be taken as indicative of Tourism Tasmania's
opinions

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 2 Jul 1999 11:35 AM, Martin Crisp
<mailto:Spa### [at] tesseractcomau> wrote:
>Cliff Bowman wrote in message <377b93bf.459452@news.povray.org>...
>>On Thu, 1 Jul 1999 10:56:47 +1000, "Martin Crisp"
>><Spa### [at] tesseractcomau> wrote:

Bringing the time-honoured usenet tradition of following-up to your own
posts to POV-Ray...

[snip]

>>IMHO it sounds like the Mac you're using has enough similarities to
>>Windoze to suffer some similar problems. I'd imagine that there's some
>>grabage management/memory management that's suffering slowdown
>because
>>POV isn't releasing enough CPU power to the OS. If I'm roughly right
>
>Hmm, no offence but I doubt it (but I'll fiddle over the weekend and
>followup if I find anything). When I say other apps:

As noted in a reply to Thorsten (in the first thread that eventually showed
up...)..

looks like it's having the preview window open in the mac client that
causes the render-time dilation.


[snip]

>Thanks for the comment, will advise if I can narrow down an 'optimum'...

Which is why I followed-up.

Have Fun
Martin
--
Owner/Operator - Tesseract Computing
<hypercube 'at' tesseract.com.au> or just reply.

Computer Systems Officer - Tourism Tasmania
<Martin.Crisp 'at' tourism.tas.gov.au>

I speak for me.

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I think that I was the one who coined "render time  decay".  Things became
horribly slower as I proceeded in frames in an animation of running blob "metal
men."

I also showed how upgrading my CPU and memory gave something like a 10X boost
to rendering in BRYCE; but barely a 2.5X boost to rendering in povray.   I
asked a dumb question then, and I will repeat it now:

Is there a way to make povray more RAM-intensive?



Martin Crisp wrote:

> On Fri, 2 Jul 1999 11:35 AM, Martin Crisp
> <mailto:Spa### [at] tesseractcomau> wrote:
> >Cliff Bowman wrote in message <377b93bf.459452@news.povray.org>...
> >>On Thu, 1 Jul 1999 10:56:47 +1000, "Martin Crisp"
> >><Spa### [at] tesseractcomau> wrote:
>
> Bringing the time-honoured usenet tradition of following-up to your own
> posts to POV-Ray...
>
> [snip]
>
> >>IMHO it sounds like the Mac you're using has enough similarities to
> >>Windoze to suffer some similar problems. I'd imagine that there's some
> >>grabage management/memory management that's suffering slowdown
> >because
> >>POV isn't releasing enough CPU power to the OS. If I'm roughly right
> >
> >Hmm, no offence but I doubt it (but I'll fiddle over the weekend and
> >followup if I find anything). When I say other apps:
>
> As noted in a reply to Thorsten (in the first thread that eventually showed
> up...)..
>
> looks like it's having the preview window open in the mac client that
> causes the render-time dilation.
>
> [snip]
>
> >Thanks for the comment, will advise if I can narrow down an 'optimum'...
>
> Which is why I followed-up.
>
> Have Fun
> Martin
> --
> Owner/Operator - Tesseract Computing
> <hypercube 'at' tesseract.com.au> or just reply.
>
> Computer Systems Officer - Tourism Tasmania
> <Martin.Crisp 'at' tourism.tas.gov.au>
>
> I speak for me.

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In article <3784AC44.D4EFAA51@geocities.com> , "Greg M. Johnson" 
<gre### [at] geocitiescom> wrote:

> Is there a way to make povray more RAM-intensive?

Yes, there is : Pay 20+ professional developers and two years later you
should have a completely rewritten POV-Ray that is much faster :-)
(You may not want to hire former M$ programmers if you ever want to use POV
again - you know, they like to program this 'bug' thing...)


    Thorsten

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