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1 Nov 2024 07:25:47 EDT (-0400)
  Rendering across multiple machines (Message 1 to 5 of 5)  
From: Alan McFarlane
Subject: Rendering across multiple machines
Date: 23 Sep 1998 17:00:26
Message: <01bde7f5$169f8a00$cfc322c3@desktop>
Anyone got any idea as to how to write some code to allow pov to render
across two machines using a serial link?


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From: Patrick Magee
Subject: Re: Rendering across multiple machines
Date: 23 Sep 1998 18:16:32
Message: <36096525.1FAEB187@fltdyn.com>
Alan McFarlane wrote:

> Anyone got any idea as to how to write some code to allow pov to render
> across two machines using a serial link?

  Red Hat Extreme Linux (aka Beowulf) will allow this. It is designed to
"parallel" individual machines. I believe it was InfoWorld that tested
Extreme Linux by using a special compile of POV-Ray and a network of
several machines. It was a TCP/IP network, not serial, but the numbers were
impressive. The price for Extreme Linux? $30 or so. Network cards, $0(My
employer was converting to 100baseT and did not want to fool with the old
cards). Cable to connect two machines, $9. I am in the process of setting
up my own array of Linux machines to help with  my rendering times.


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From: Patrick Magee
Subject: Re: Rendering across multiple machines
Date: 23 Sep 1998 18:26:13
Message: <36096773.C89FE1C7@fltdyn.com>
Patrick Magee wrote:

> Alan McFarlane wrote:
>
> > Anyone got any idea as to how to write some code to allow pov to render
> > across two machines using a serial link?
>
>   Red Hat Extreme Linux (aka Beowulf) will allow this. It is designed to
> "parallel" individual machines. I believe it was InfoWorld that tested
> Extreme Linux by using a special compile of POV-Ray and a network of
> several machines. It was a TCP/IP network, not serial, but the numbers were
> impressive. The price for Extreme Linux? $30 or so. Network cards, $0(My
> employer was converting to 100baseT and did not want to fool with the old
> cards). Cable to connect two machines, $9. I am in the process of setting
> up my own array of Linux machines to help with  my rendering times.

Actually it was PCWEEK that had the article. It can be found at:

http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/reviews/0608/08linux.html


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From: Roland Mas
Subject: Re: Rendering across multiple machines
Date: 23 Sep 1998 21:41:46
Message: <m367ee49yy.fsf@rpc66.acr.atr.co.jp>
"Alan McFarlane" <amc### [at] bigfootcom> writes:

> Anyone got any idea as to how to write some code to allow pov to render
> across two machines using a serial link?

  Don't break your head on it, some people already did... They called it
PVM-POV. It assumes you have a TCP layer (or at least IP), so if you use
PPP on your serial link you can use it. It makes use of the Parallel
Virtual Machine, the homepage of which can be found at
<URL:http://www.epm.ornl.gov/pvm/pvm_home.html>. The patch for POV-Ray
(3.0) is available on Andreas Dilger's web page at Calgary:
<URL:http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/povray/pvmpov.html>

  The point is, unless your scenes are really complex and require a huge
amount of computation for each pixel, this will not be very useful on a
slow link such as a serial one, because the transmission speed will be the
limiting factor. If your scene is really complex, though, you can expect
the overall speed of calculation to be very low, and so the transmission
speed will not limit any more. Could be worth it.

Roland.
-- 
Les francophones m'appellent Roland Mas,
English speakers call me Rowlannd' Mass,
Nihongode hanasu hitoha [Lolando Masu] to iimasu.
Choisissez ! Take your pick ! Erande kudasai !


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From: Mario Splivalo
Subject: Re: Rendering across multiple machines
Date: 24 Sep 1998 08:21:30
Message: <fZhC2MioQ6ZO091yn@jagor.srce.hr>
In article <01bde7f5$169f8a00$cfc322c3@desktop>,
"Alan McFarlane" <amc### [at] bigfootcom> wrote:
>Anyone got any idea as to how to write some code to allow pov to render
>across two machines using a serial link?

If you're using UNIX/Linux, you have several freewaver pearl scripts
wich will do so. One machine is servers, others are clients, it works
over TCP/IP, and, it's kinda cool.

But, regarding the OS you're using, you can always separate the job among
several machines. If you're rendering a 300 frames animation, you could
set POV, for instance, like this:

Your home PC, some P133 or something could render like 50 frames.
PII-400 At work could render 100 frames.
And some Sun UltraSPARC could render like 150 frames.

Or, if you're rendering single scene, you could say your home PC to render
first 100 lines (out of 800), that PII could do like 250 lines, and
that Sun could do the rest.

Look in the documentation for +SE and +EF switches, and browse trough
the animation switches section.

        Mike


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