Rendering an animation (obviously)

An individual frame takes about 5 minutes.

When rendering via an ini file though each frame takes longer and longer
until within 4 or 5 frames the whole render process has ground to a
complete halt.

frame 0 : 5 minutes
frame 1 : 10 minutes

If I start the animation using +SF1 then frame 1 takes 5 minutes

Is this a known issue with Povray?

Further info using scattering media, with a couple of spotlights, shed loads
of reflective surfaces, photons turned on with media interaction.

Machine Dell XPS Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz 3.25G ram : whilst render is running
Sysinfo is indicating 2.4G physical ram is free ie not hitting swap file.

Regards
Rob

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I've noticed a similar slowdown when rendering animations without an ini 
file, though it wasn't as severe as that, it only got slower by a small 
percentage each frame. In my case it seems to be something to do with pov's 
message window. I found a trick that if I press Alt once (in the windows 
version of pov) povray stops updating the message window and animations 
render faster, though this only has a big effect on animations with very 
short render times, like 5 seconds per frame. I dunno if that's the cause of 
the problems or just a similar aspect, but I've definitely had animations 
that render slower after 100 frames than if I start them on the 100th frame.

It's worth mentioning I haven't noticed this with the latest versions of 
povray  (though it's still faster with the Alt trick), but I haven't been 
rendering many animations. Back when I originally noticed the problem I 
satisfied myself it was also affecting still images, i.e. the bottom of an 
image would render slower than the top. But in my experience it's only a 
small percentage slower so I never got to the bottom of the mystery.

-- 
Tek
http://evilsuperbrain.com

"i_need_a_unique_name" <nomail@nomail> wrote in message 
news:web.45827829b0256beac77a5930@news.povray.org...
> Rendering an animation (obviously)
>
> An individual frame takes about 5 minutes.
>
> When rendering via an ini file though each frame takes longer and longer
> until within 4 or 5 frames the whole render process has ground to a
> complete halt.
>
> frame 0 : 5 minutes
> frame 1 : 10 minutes
>
> If I start the animation using +SF1 then frame 1 takes 5 minutes
>
> Is this a known issue with Povray?
>
> Further info using scattering media, with a couple of spotlights, shed 
> loads
> of reflective surfaces, photons turned on with media interaction.
>
> Machine Dell XPS Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz 3.25G ram : whilst render is running
> Sysinfo is indicating 2.4G physical ram is free ie not hitting swap file.
>
> Regards
> Rob
>
>

Post a reply to this message

"i_need_a_unique_name" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Rendering an animation (obviously)
>
> An individual frame takes about 5 minutes.
>
> When rendering via an ini file though each frame takes longer and longer
> until within 4 or 5 frames the whole render process has ground to a
> complete halt.
>
> frame 0 : 5 minutes
> frame 1 : 10 minutes
>
> If I start the animation using +SF1 then frame 1 takes 5 minutes
>
> Is this a known issue with Povray?
>
> Further info using scattering media, with a couple of spotlights, shed loads
> of reflective surfaces, photons turned on with media interaction.
>
> Machine Dell XPS Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz 3.25G ram : whilst render is running
> Sysinfo is indicating 2.4G physical ram is free ie not hitting swap file.
>
> Regards
> Rob
There was a problem where PovRay did not release the memory after each
frame. You can check this using the task manager and see if the Mem Usage
increases after each frame. My workaround was to split the animation up
using Subset_Start_Frame and Subset_End_Frame in several ini files. Then
use the render queue to render them sequentially


Stephen

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Thanks folks, good to confirm its not just me.

The slow down is only crippling when using photons and media interaction. I
guess if I insist on doing that then I'll have to render each frame
individually using the render queue... but since photons and media
interaction is insanely slow at the best of times and the irtc entry date
draws nearer I think I'll have to live without the disco glitterball
simulation ;-)

I'll do some memory monitoring in the New Year.

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