Stephen <mca### [at] aolcom> wrote:

>
>  From what I can remember is that Clockless_Animation was implemented as
> a demo to show that it could be done, some time ago. But no one showed
> any interest in it and it was left as it was.

I have to admit that I didn't work with it either-- mainly because I didn't
truly know HOW to use it! But I'm beginning to see the real power of these new
features. I just ran an older and not-too-complex animation scene (with a few
necessary changes to the camera definition) and saw a 3-fold decrease in total
render time. With a *complex* slow-to-parse scene, the time-savings could be
enormous! Of course, right now only the camera can be moved; but that's quite
useful by itself, for testing.

If I had only known... :-(

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Am 29.06.2017 um 21:05 schrieb Bald Eagle:

> About this whole clockless animation - It would be interesting if it could be
> modified so that POV-Ray split a scene into 2 separately parsed sections - a
> static part, and a dynamic part.  Then you could have, say, a complex terrain
> that takes forever to parse - but only gets parsed once, and then clouds or the
> sun, or an automobile or a ball that is the only thing that changes position in
> the scene.

You might be interested to hear that _UberPOV_ already provides an
experimental mechanism that can be used to that end:

    #persistent Foo = ...;

defines an identifier that will survive across parser runs in an
animation. So you could use

    #ifndef(MyStaticScene)
      #persistent MyStaticScene = union {
        // Static stuff present in all frames goes here
      }
    #end
    object { MyStaticScene }
    // Dynamic stuff changing between individual frames goes here

This mechanism is also flexible enough to define the individual
components of your animation's dynamic portion just once, and in the
individual frames just rotate and translate them to their final
orientation and location.


(In UberPOV for Windows, this mechanism will even retain data between
consecutive runs of a single-frame scene, or even different scenes; but
that's more an unintended side effect of its implementation rather than
deliberate, and may be subject to change. In essence, variables declared
using `#persistent` are just never deleted as long as UberPOV is
running. This may be subject to change.)

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clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:

> You might be interested to hear that _UberPOV_ already provides an
> experimental mechanism that can be used to that end:
>
>     #persistent Foo = ...;
.....
> This mechanism is also flexible enough to define the individual
> components of your animation's dynamic portion just once, and in the
> individual frames just rotate and translate them to their final
> orientation and location.

Aha.  So many things to experiment with, and it hadn't occurred to me that the
#persistent directive would be applicable to things other than "variables" -
though I suppose to a certain degree, everything is just an identifier with
"data" stuffed into that bin.
I can see Kenneth salivating now, rubbing his hands together, and getting the
42-cup coffee urn fired up for some very nice animations....   :D

> (In UberPOV for Windows, this mechanism will even retain data between
> consecutive runs of a single-frame scene, or even different scenes; but
> that's more an unintended side effect of its implementation rather than
> deliberate, and may be subject to change. In essence, variables declared
> using `#persistent` are just never deleted as long as UberPOV is
> running. This may be subject to change.)

Hmmm.
And I suppose a way to undo that would be #ifdef() and then #undef().

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On 6/30/2017 6:14 AM, Kenneth wrote:
> Stephen <mca### [at] aolcom> wrote:
>
>>
>>   From what I can remember is that Clockless_Animation was implemented as
>> a demo to show that it could be done, some time ago. But no one showed
>> any interest in it and it was left as it was.
>
> I have to admit that I didn't work with it either-- mainly because I didn't
> truly know HOW to use it! But I'm beginning to see the real power of these new
> features. I just ran an older and not-too-complex animation scene (with a few
> necessary changes to the camera definition) and saw a 3-fold decrease in total
> render time. With a *complex* slow-to-parse scene, the time-savings could be
> enormous! Of course, right now only the camera can be moved; but that's quite
> useful by itself, for testing.
>

The mesh_camera is another feature that came out about the same time, I 
think. I've read the docs and still don't understand what it does. :(


> If I had only known... :-(
>

The story of my life. :)


-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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"Bald Eagle" <cre### [at] netscapenet> wrote:

> I can see Kenneth salivating now, rubbing his hands together, and getting the
> 42-cup coffee urn fired up for some very nice animations....   :D
>
 Yessirree!  (I haven't tried using UberPOV yet; I need to dip my toes into
that! So little time, so much to do...)

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On 7/1/2017 5:17 PM, Kenneth wrote:
> "Bald Eagle" <cre### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
>
>> I can see Kenneth salivating now, rubbing his hands together, and getting the
>> 42-cup coffee urn fired up for some very nice animations....   :D
>>
>   Yessirree!  (I haven't tried using UberPOV yet; I need to dip my toes into
> that! So little time, so much to do...)
>
>
I is worth using it even it is only for the speedup.


-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> Am 29.06.2017 um 21:05 schrieb Bald Eagle:
>

>
> You might be interested to hear that _UberPOV_ already provides an
> experimental mechanism that can be used to that end:
>
> [snip]

> (In UberPOV for Windows, this mechanism will even retain data between
> consecutive runs of a single-frame scene...

From visiting the UberPOV Github repository here...

https://github.com/UberPOV/UberPOV

... I'm honestly not sure how to download it, or which of the separate components
are needed. I assume that this is the Windows version(?) Does it need to be
*compiled* on my end? I don't see a clearly-labeled Windows executable there.

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On 7/2/2017 5:02 PM, Kenneth wrote:
> clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
>> Am 29.06.2017 um 21:05 schrieb Bald Eagle:
>>
>
>>
>> You might be interested to hear that _UberPOV_ already provides an
>> experimental mechanism that can be used to that end:
>>
>> [snip]
>
>> (In UberPOV for Windows, this mechanism will even retain data between
>> consecutive runs of a single-frame scene...
>
>  From visiting the UberPOV Github repository here...
>
> https://github.com/UberPOV/UberPOV
>
> .... I'm honestly not sure how to download it, or which of the separate components
> are needed. I assume that this is the Windows version(?) Does it need to be
> *compiled* on my end? I don't see a clearly-labeled Windows executable there.
>
>
>
>
There is a green button near the top right which will start a download.
I had a quick look at the zip file and could not see any msi or exe 
files. so it looks like a compile.

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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"Kenneth" <kdw### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> > Am 29.06.2017 um 21:05 schrieb Bald Eagle:
> >
>
> >
> > You might be interested to hear that _UberPOV_ already provides an
> > experimental mechanism that can be used to that end:
> >
> > [snip]
>
> > (In UberPOV for Windows, this mechanism will even retain data between
> > consecutive runs of a single-frame scene...
>
> From visiting the UberPOV Github repository here...
>
> https://github.com/UberPOV/UberPOV
>
> ... I'm honestly not sure how to download it, or which of the separate components
> are needed. I assume that this is the Windows version(?) Does it need to be
> *compiled* on my end? I don't see a clearly-labeled Windows executable there.

it is not you; it is github.  github is retarded.  i suspect it was made by
linuxians.
  above the red bar is cryptic scribbling 'commits', 'branches', 'releases' etc,
click on 'releases'.  there you will find the binaries.

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Am 02.07.2017 um 18:02 schrieb Kenneth:

> From visiting the UberPOV Github repository here...
> 
> https://github.com/UberPOV/UberPOV
> 
> ... I'm honestly not sure how to download it, or which of the separate components
> are needed. I assume that this is the Windows version(?) Does it need to be
> *compiled* on my end? I don't see a clearly-labeled Windows executable there.

As guessed by Stephen, that would be the source package, which you
/could/ use to compile UberPOV from source codes.

To be precise, it would be the source package of the development branch,
with the latest changes, which is usually not what you want: Even if you
did intend to build from source code, you'd normally want an iteration
of the source code that has a well-defined version number associated,
which you can find at:

https://github.com/UberPOV/UberPOV/releases

There, for each such well-defined version you'll again find at least the
corresponding source code package (in both zip and tar.gz format), but
usually also pre-built Windows binaries.


I guess I should overhaul the `README.md` file (which is displayed at
the bottom of https://github.com/UberPOV/UberPOV) to include an obvious
link to the releases section; as soon as I find the time of course.

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