How difficult would it be to be able to add an option to indicate which 
blocks are currently being rendered? I often wonder where the render 
threads are sitting, sometimes its obvious, sometimes its not.

Just an idea. Obviously, this should be a command line option, those 
that don't want the current block to show can turn it off.

Thanks for the great effort to get the next version to this point guys. 
My hats off to the POV-Team. 3.7 has been a long road to a new release. 
I've often wondered if 3.7 would ever get to the stage its at now.

Thanks for the awesome work. Can't wait to see what's in store for the 
future of our favorite raytracer.

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Am 26.02.2011 04:23, schrieb Mike Raiford:
> How difficult would it be to be able to add an option to indicate which
> blocks are currently being rendered? I often wonder where the render
> threads are sitting, sometimes its obvious, sometimes its not.

Since December, 3.7.0 is essentially feature-frozen, and changes are 
limited to bugfixes (the new SSLT syntax was an exception). There'll be 
a 3.7.1 for sure though, and I'm pretty confident it won't take nearly 
as long as 3.7.0.

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Le 26/02/2011 04:23, Mike Raiford nous fit lire :
> How difficult would it be to be able to add an option to indicate which
> blocks are currently being rendered? I often wonder where the render
> threads are sitting, sometimes its obvious, sometimes its not.
> 
> Just an idea. Obviously, this should be a command line option, those
> that don't want the current block to show can turn it off.

I second Clipka's anwser.

I have nevertheless a few questions: how would you highlight/indicate
the rendering blockS ?

(Yes, blocks, with an s, as there are many blocks rendered at the same
time (according to the number of threads))

On a preview picture, it's just another block of pixels... they start
black, but toggling them any other colour won't save you if the final
colour is the one chosen... (let's say it turn white when the render
starts for that block, how would you differentiate from the final white
from your picture ? the same issue will be happening whatever the colour
or pattern: sometime it will be invisible)

And it will really slowdown the rendering of the fast scene (double the
amount of data in the bottleneck: first to set it "White", later to set
it to final)

As a textual output, I guess that getting block number would be useless,
and displaying the two pair of coordinates (top-left, size ?) would be
competiting with pixels %, you would not be able to actually see it.
(the pixels % is for actually rendered pixels, it is always a bit late
when display) (and it might indeed corrupt the actual pixel %
indication, when toggling the block on the preview image)

Why do you need to know the rendering blocks ?

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Le_Forgeron <jgr### [at] freefr> wrote:
> I have nevertheless a few questions: how would you highlight/indicate
> the rendering blockS ?

  In the preview window, draw a semi-transparent border around the blocks
being currently rendered.

> And it will really slowdown the rendering of the fast scene (double the
> amount of data in the bottleneck: first to set it "White", later to set
> it to final)

  If the feature is an optional command-line option, it doesn't need to be
used for very fast renders.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   In the preview window, draw a semi-transparent border around the blocks
> being currently rendered.

Or toggle between normal and inverse video a couple times a second?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
  "How did he die?"   "He got shot in the hand."
     "That was fatal?"
          "He was holding a live grenade at the time."

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   In the preview window, draw a semi-transparent border around the blocks
> > being currently rendered.

> Or toggle between normal and inverse video a couple times a second?

  That would be really annoying.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Am 26.02.2011 20:07, schrieb Darren New:

> Or toggle between normal and inverse video a couple times a second?

Rather not.

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>>   In the preview window, draw a semi-transparent border around the blocks
>>> being currently rendered.
> 
>> Or toggle between normal and inverse video a couple times a second?
> 
>   That would be really annoying.

Hmmm. Or maybe only while you're holding down a particular key? Or toggle it 
by hitting the space bar while focus is on the preview page?

This is why they have the "crawling ants" boundaries for selections in 
graphics packages: it's pretty obvious where it is regardless of what's 
underneath.

Maybe toggling for each pixel updated, so you can see how fast each block is 
rendering? :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
  "How did he die?"   "He got shot in the hand."
     "That was fatal?"
          "He was holding a live grenade at the time."

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Le 2011/02/26 14:07, Darren New a écrit :
> Warp wrote:
>> In the preview window, draw a semi-transparent border around the blocks
>> being currently rendered.
>
> Or toggle between normal and inverse video a couple times a second?
>

I vote against that one.

The border would probably be the best. It can be red, or the compliment 
of the current tint displayed.

Anyway, it should be OFF by default.



Alain

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Alain <aze### [at] qwertyorg> wrote:
> Le 2011/02/26 14:07, Darren New a écrit :
> > Warp wrote:
> >> In the preview window, draw a semi-transparent border around the blocks
> >> being currently rendered.
> >
> > Or toggle between normal and inverse video a couple times a second?
> >
>
> I vote against that one.
>
> The border would probably be the best. It can be red, or the compliment
> of the current tint displayed.
>
> Anyway, it should be OFF by default.
>
>
>
> Alain

Yes, I don't care about how it will look as long as it's off by default.

-tgq

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Le_Forgeron wrote:

> the same issue will be happening whatever the colour
> or pattern: sometime it will be invisible)

the same holds for the grey-checkered background pattern indicating
not yet rendered blocks. It's not likely that a real scene will match
it exactly and if it pathetically does then it's not very critical.

So a rather non-invasive method of marking blocks might be to use the
exact same pattern that is already there but with different colors, e.g.
black-red instead of gray-white.

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On 2/26/2011 1:07 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>> In the preview window, draw a semi-transparent border around the blocks
>> being currently rendered.
>
> Or toggle between normal and inverse video a couple times a second?
>

And here I was just thinking it should be a plain box with an x marked 
through it... drawn sort of like the bounding boxes :)

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On 2/26/2011 4:26 PM, Darren New wrote:
>
> Maybe toggling for each pixel updated, so you can see how fast each
> block is rendering? :-)
>

The block currently being rendered doesn't show anything until the 
render is complete for that block.

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Mike Raiford wrote:
> And here I was just thinking it should be a plain box with an x marked 
> through it... drawn sort of like the bounding boxes :)

Since the box is apparently empty until the whole box is calculated, it 
would seem to be a perfectly fine solution. (I had forgotten how it looked, 
but I guess I was remembering seeing entire blocks being updated instead of 
individual pixels of a particular block.)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
  "How did he die?"   "He got shot in the hand."
     "That was fatal?"
          "He was holding a live grenade at the time."

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Trevor G Quayle <Tin### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Yes, I don't care about how it will look as long as it's off by default.

  If it's a subtle border around the block being rendered, why is it so
important to be off by default?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Trevor G Quayle <Tin### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> > Yes, I don't care about how it will look as long as it's off by default.
>
>   If it's a subtle border around the block being rendered, why is it so
> important to be off by default?
>
> --
>                                                           - Warp

If it's subtle I suppose.  I wasn't liking the idea of flashing or marching
borders.

-tgq

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