"jr" <cre### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>
>

> second h/d and place all '/tmp/' and working directories on it (faster i/f than
> USB).

and Bald Eagle wrote:
> You can also do that thing where you use a (cheap) USB drive to boost your
> memory - no idea how fast/slow that is, but it will save on the HDD thrashing.
>

At my 'advanced' age, these 21-century technological changes and improvements
are a bit slow to digest, ha. I'm not sure as to how all of this works. I do
have a 500GB Samsung USB external memory (a solid-state 'thumb drive'); can
POV-ray and all my files be loaded onto it and actually RUN from there? I would
imagine that a bunch of library-paths would need changing(?), at the very least.
And/or changes to the Windows registry(?) It's all a mystery to me, I admit.

Btw, I was told by a local computer-repair shop that my Win 7's HD could be
retro-fitted with a SSD, while keeping all of my files, the OS, etc intact. Hmm,
I wonder if that's true.

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hi,

"Kenneth" <kdw### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> "jr" <cre### [at] gmailcom> wrote:

> > second h/d and place all '/tmp/' and working directories on it (faster i/f than
> > USB).
>
> and Bald Eagle wrote:
> > You can also do that thing where you use a (cheap) USB drive to boost your
> > memory - no idea how fast/slow that is, but it will save on the HDD thrashing.
> >
>
> At my 'advanced' age, these 21-century technological changes and improvements
> are a bit slow to digest, ha. ...

get with it, granddad!  :-) :-)

> Btw, I was told by a local computer-repair shop that my Win 7's HD could be
> retro-fitted with a SSD, while keeping all of my files, the OS, etc intact. Hmm,
> I wonder if that's true.

go for it.  not only is the read/write performance so much better, you'll also
save money.  (here I moved two "always on" machines to SSD, and saw a small drop
in daily electricity consumption (amounting to ~4 pence per day); given the

than their cost over that time, ie 1825 days)


regards, jr.

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"Kenneth" <kdw### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Using a single image_map, and *without* pre-#declaring the image,
> the parsing took a LOT of time (with constantly increasing memory use as the
> image had to be 're-processed' for each iteration.) By pre#declaring the image,
> the entire parse/render occured in mere seconds, with a much-reduced memory
> load.

Right, because the POV-Ray parser can't know that it's already red that image
file in, and so it re-reads it from disk, reloads it into a new memory slot,
etc...


> Yep, I agree. Sad to say, when I started working on this scene, I used jpg's,
> and have continued that way ever since. The reason being, that my OLD version of
> Photoshop has wonky problems with correct png gamma when saving an edited image.
> So no png's. But otherwise I LOVE my old version of PS; it's just easier to use
> (for me) than GIMP.

I have not found GIMP to be user-friendly.
In windoze I used wingif, winjpg, Irfanview, and paint.net


> > Buy more RAM -
>
> Ha! But that would defeat my purpose of trying to get me scene to run in, uh,
> 256K  :-P

I look forward to the Inigo Quilez Demoscene version in 8k.   :P

> > I ignored the people who said I couldn't put 16 GB of RAM in my
> > laptop after researching the issue. Been running fine for years.
>
> THAT'S interesting. Yeah, AFAIK, my Win 7 box has an 8MB limit(?), so I never
> thought of trying to increase it. So, my computer wouldn't actually explode,
> right??

It will just not be able to access the memory properly.
It's all very architecture dependent.  YMMV
Flip it over and have someone pop in different (but proper _type_) memory and
reboot it.  If it works (system stats report all the GB you installed are
recognized, then I'd buy it.

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

> I have not found GIMP to be user-friendly.
> In windoze I used wingif, winjpg, Irfanview, and paint.net

Yes, Irfanview is handy. and fast. The others I'll have investigate.
>
>
> > > Buy more RAM -
> >
> > Ha! But that would defeat my purpose of trying to get me scene to run in, uh,
> > 256K  :-P
>
> I look forward to the Inigo Quilez Demoscene version in 8k.   :P
>
I had to look that up :-O  And Shadertoy. WOW, some *stunning* procedural CG.

Meanwhile, just for a bit o' fun, I ran my scene code again as-is, but with 5000
buildings, the most ever-- just to observe the parse/render/computer
performance. On my lowly Windows 7 box: disk-swap hell!!

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Preview of image 'buildings_5000_10_5_20.jpg'

"Kenneth" <kdw### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> "Bald Eagle" <cre### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
>
> > I have not found GIMP to be user-friendly.
> > In windoze I used wingif, winjpg, Irfanview, and paint.net
>
> Yes, Irfanview is handy. and fast. The others I'll have investigate.

wingif and winjpg are OLD, but because of that, they are tiny programs and FAST.
If you can't find them, I will look and see if I have them archived anywhere.

paint.net is mammoth, and you have to install all of that .net framework stuff,
but I found it very useful - probably what GIMP should be in terms of usability
paired with capability.


> I had to look that up :-O  And Shadertoy. WOW, some *stunning* procedural CG.

I'd say that IQ has such a good foundation in what he does because of the
limitations of what he had to work with.   ALL the fat had to be trimmed and
everything had to be re-used to squeeze as much out of the code as possible.
I learn a LOT from studying the Shadertoy stuff because it's all written from
scratch.  Camera, light source, shadows, geometry, patterns, shading...

> Meanwhile, just for a bit o' fun, I ran my scene code again as-is, but with 5000
> buildings, the most ever-- just to observe the parse/render/computer
> performance. On my lowly Windows 7 box: disk-swap hell!!

Find a used / surplus computer reseller - you can likely get something better
than what you have for ~$100  I haven't bought a NEW computer since .... 2008.
The way people go through technology these days to get the newest flashing crap
- you can pick up their discards for pennies on the dollar.  Yard sales, pawn
shops, Goodwill, classifieds, Ebay, Craigslist, .... I could probably find a
fully functioning laptop at the dump/transfer station up here if I went there
often enough...

It's been a while since I've seen the development of this project, but depending
on the resolution of the images, maybe you could replace some of them with
procedurally generated functions - esp if you're doing 5000 buildings - can you
really see the detail?

ATM, I've got 48,000 tiles making up a whole planet - there's no way I'm parsing
and rendering all of them if I don't have to.   That's the next phase, once I
get done with all of the Bezier editing.

Good work - I'm glad you're back, working on your projects, and having fun.

-BW

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> "Bald Eagle" <cre### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> 
>> I have not found GIMP to be user-friendly.
>> In windoze I used wingif, winjpg, Irfanview, and paint.net
> 
> Yes, Irfanview is handy. and fast. The others I'll have investigate.
>>
>>
>>>> Buy more RAM -
>>>
>>> Ha! But that would defeat my purpose of trying to get me scene to run in, uh,
>>> 256K  :-P
>>
>> I look forward to the Inigo Quilez Demoscene version in 8k.   :P
>>
> I had to look that up :-O  And Shadertoy. WOW, some *stunning* procedural CG.
> 
> Meanwhile, just for a bit o' fun, I ran my scene code again as-is, but with 5000
> buildings, the most ever-- just to observe the parse/render/computer
> performance. On my lowly Windows 7 box: disk-swap hell!!
> 

Time to add some more RAM

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Alain Martel <kua### [at] videotronca> wrote:
>
> Time to add some more RAM

Or else to render less-complex scenes! :-P

I do like my old Windows 7 machine, but it has it's limitations, as I'm seeing
now... unless I try increasing the RAM 'over its limit' as Bald Eagle suggested.

Meanwhile, I just came up with a simple trick to make the *many* semi-repetitive
buildings look a bit different from each other: by randomly varying their
finish{diffuse...} values. I don't know why that idea didn't occur to me before.

It wasn't easy to implement, because of the way the building textures are
constructed-- but it turned out to be a simple code change in the end.

The effect may look subtle in this example image-- the buildings all use the
same window image_map and 'concrete' color-- but it looks quite nice when it's
'multiplied' by all of the various buildings and their image_maps.

BTW, I have added 3 more 'window images' to me collection-- now at 37!

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Op 07/10/2020 om 05:52 schreef Kenneth:
> Meanwhile, I just came up with a simple trick to make the *many* semi-repetitive
> buildings look a bit different from each other: by randomly varying their
> finish{diffuse...} values. I don't know why that idea didn't occur to me before.
> 

Very effective indeed.

-- 
Thomas

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"Kenneth" <kdw### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>
> Meanwhile, just for a bit o' fun, I ran my scene code again as-is, but with 5000
> buildings, the most ever-- just to observe the parse/render/computer
> performance. On my lowly Windows 7 box: disk-swap hell!!

SO.. with two basic changes to my code...
1) using arrays for pre-#declaring both the window/building image_maps AND their
window hold-out image_map mattes (for the reflections)
2) switching from an image_pattern to a MUCH-better pigment_pattern syntax per
Ive's suggestion, to now make efficient use of both sets of those image_maps

....the scene parses *much* faster, and uses a fraction of the RAM that it did
previously.

With 30,000 buildings(!) plus probably 200,000+ roof-top greebles, RAM use is
down to 3.7GB. I could probably run 100,000 buildings now before disk-swapping
would occur.

With these changes, I've discovered that the greebles consume 3/4 of the memory
use! That was a surprise; I obviously need to make them more efficient.

Here's the 30,000-buildings render, just as an exercise in absurdity ;-P I'm
still adjusting the lighting.

But my ultimate plan is to make an animated fly-over of the city...so the more
buildings, the better.

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