Computers have been networked not for a long time. The internet is almost 
every where. If programs are not written for networks they might as well 
stay in dos. They will not be of use. Povray is know for doing things that 
other programs can not yet. But Povray in all of its power can not even 
brake up the image into chunks and pass those to nodes to render and return 
the part of the image. This IS a simple venture. I have built an external 
system to do just this but it is clumsey. Even simpler is to send frames 
out to different systems. This would help also. This is something the 
povray team should have already done. I know the program is free but honer 
and pride in work along with integraty should have driven them to write a 
completely modern application. As for money they can talk to me about that.





>"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
>news:39586434@news.povray.org...
>>   Too bad that Windows9x doesn't support multiple processors. NT
>>   supports, 
>> but I think that the number of NT users are an extremely small percent
>> of the Windows9x users.
>>   So I think it would be a waste of time.
>
>Around 10 %.
>
>
>--

>Clear targets for a confused civilization
>http://www.BeingFound.com
>web design and seminars
>+43 699 17343674
>
>
>

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war### [at] tagpovrayorg (Warp) wrote in <3959ac7d@news.povray.org>:

>In povray.general Thorsten Froehlich <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:
>: This is not correct.  Windows 9x, NT and 2000 are all pre-emptive
>: multitasking systems.
>
>  Win9x is only partially it.
>


'partially' which means win98 is cooporative......(just like mac OS, not 
counting X of course)

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In article <8F617F84Elavendersmith@204.213.191.228>, 
lav### [at] hotmailcom (lavender) wrote:

> Computers have been networked not for a long time. The internet is 
> almost every where. If programs are not written for networks they 
> might as well stay in dos. They will not be of use. Povray is know 
> for doing things that other programs can not yet. But Povray in all 
> of its power can not even brake up the image into chunks and pass 
> those to nodes to render and return the part of the image. This IS a 
> simple venture. I have built an external system to do just this but 
> it is clumsey. Even simpler is to send frames out to different 
> systems. This would help also. This is something the povray team 
> should have already done. I know the program is free but honer and 
> pride in work along with integraty should have driven them to write a 
> completely modern application. As for money they can talk to me about 
> that.

It is not as easy as you seem to think...there is a lot of data that 
needs to be shared, the code isn't built with this type of rendering in 
mind, so most of the code would need to be rewritten, and the solution 
needs to be cross-platform. Also, there are certain things like noise 
and data generated on the fly which would need to be synchronized 
somehow. Add the need for testing, and it is pretty obvious why it 
hasn't been done yet.
Distributing frames to render is much easier, but still has problems-all 
the frames up to the current one would have to be parsed, since a frame 
may depend on the frames before it.

The POV-Team will probably at least make preparations for network 
rendering features in POV 4, but that will be a complete rewrite in C++.

-- 
Christopher James Huff - Personal e-mail: chr### [at] maccom
TAG(Technical Assistance Group) e-mail: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
Personal Web page: http://homepage.mac.com/chrishuff/
TAG Web page: http://tag.povray.org/

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is it not possible in pov to render only a portion of the screen? if it is 
it should be possible to hack a simple script together to do network 
rendering. bmrt comes with a script that does this (have one comp render a 
portion of the screen, another comp render another portion, etc then all 
the images are assembled by an external program)

chr### [at] maccom (Chris Huff) wrote in <chrishuff-
B8696F.11542328062000@news.povray.org>:

>In article <8F617F84Elavendersmith@204.213.191.228>, 
>lav### [at] hotmailcom (lavender) wrote:
>
>> Computers have been networked not for a long time. The internet is 
>> almost every where. If programs are not written for networks they 
>> might as well stay in dos. They will not be of use. Povray is know 
>> for doing things that other programs can not yet. But Povray in all 
>> of its power can not even brake up the image into chunks and pass 
>> those to nodes to render and return the part of the image. This IS a 
>> simple venture. I have built an external system to do just this but 
>> it is clumsey. Even simpler is to send frames out to different 
>> systems. This would help also. This is something the povray team 
>> should have already done. I know the program is free but honer and 
>> pride in work along with integraty should have driven them to write a 
>> completely modern application. As for money they can talk to me about 
>> that.
>
>It is not as easy as you seem to think...there is a lot of data that 
>needs to be shared, the code isn't built with this type of rendering in 
>mind, so most of the code would need to be rewritten, and the solution 
>needs to be cross-platform. Also, there are certain things like noise 
>and data generated on the fly which would need to be synchronized 
>somehow. Add the need for testing, and it is pretty obvious why it 
>hasn't been done yet.
>Distributing frames to render is much easier, but still has problems-all 
>the frames up to the current one would have to be parsed, since a frame 
>may depend on the frames before it.
>
>The POV-Team will probably at least make preparations for network 
>rendering features in POV 4, but that will be a complete rewrite in C++.
>

Post a reply to this message

In article <8F61873E3dashixpressnet@204.213.191.228>, das### [at] x-pressnet 
(daishi) wrote:

> is it not possible in pov to render only a portion of the screen? if 
> it is it should be possible to hack a simple script together to do 
> network rendering. bmrt comes with a script that does this (have one 
> comp render a portion of the screen, another comp render another 
> portion, etc then all the images are assembled by an external 
> program)

It is possible to render a portion of an image, but getting the images 
tiled without discontinuities is a problem. If you distribute parts of 
an image to different machines this way, features like radiosity, 
antialiasing, etc can produce a "tiles" effect, like a mosaiac 
photograph.

-- 
Christopher James Huff - Personal e-mail: chr### [at] maccom
TAG(Technical Assistance Group) e-mail: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
Personal Web page: http://homepage.mac.com/chrishuff/
TAG Web page: http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

In article <8F617F84Elavendersmith@204.213.191.228> , 
lav### [at] hotmailcom (lavender) wrote:

> But Povray in all of its power can not even
> brake up the image into chunks and pass those to nodes to render and return
> the part of the image. This IS a simple venture. I have built an external
> system to do just this but it is clumsey. Even simpler is to send frames
> out to different systems. This would help also.

While this is easy to implement on _one_ platform, doling it on multiple
platforms is an extreme amount of work.  How many of the "professional"
programs can do this on more than just a few Unix platforms?  The answers is
simple: None.  Pixar added Windows NT support for RenderMan just a short
time ago, and they have hundreds of millions of dollars (after the movies
they made for Disney).  There is no standard API for networking defined in
either the C or C== standard, even Unix has Sockets and Streams.

> This is something the
> povray team should have already done. I know the program is free but honer
> and pride in work along with integraty should have driven them to write a
> completely modern application.

There will be a rewrite for 4.0 using C++, but consider that we do it in our
spare time, don't get paid $10000/month and work 50 hours/week for POV-Ray.
Some of the features in POV-Ray also require PhD grade math to understand.
I.e. for photons there are just the mathematical models, even those who
invented these models don't have a parallel solution for them yet (at least
published).


     Thorsten


____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich
e-mail: mac### [at] povrayorg

I am a member of the POV-Ray Team.
Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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In article <8F6177D69dashixpressnet@204.213.191.228> , das### [at] x-pressnet 
(daishi) wrote:

> 'partially' which means win98 is cooporative......(just like mac OS, not
> counting X of course)

No, it is pre-emptive with a monolithic operating system.  If you write a
simple application that just executes a loop lets say 10 billion times, will
the other applications still get a share of the processor?  Yes, because the
operating system will interrupt it after a few milliseconds and then switch
to another application.  This is pre-emptive multitasking.

On a Mac with i.e. Mac OS 9 an application executing the same program will
not share the processor with other applications until it calls the operating
system and allows it.  This is co-operative multitasking.

The difference between Win 9x and Win NT/2000 is the quality (and
probability method) of the scheduling algorithms, but they are still both
pre-emptive.
In fact this is one of the major improvements in Win 9x since Win 3.x.


     Thorsten


PS: If you don't believe me, get any recent CS textbook on operating
systems, and it will tell you Win 9x and NT both use pre-emptive
multitasking :-)


____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

Post a reply to this message

In article <8F61873E3dashixpressnet@204.213.191.228> , das### [at] x-pressnet 
(daishi) wrote:

> is it not possible in pov to render only a portion of the screen? if it is
> it should be possible to hack a simple script together to do network
> rendering.

This will not work for radiosity.


      Thorsten


____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

Post a reply to this message

chr### [at] maccom (Chris Huff) wrote in <chrishuff-
60E1E5.13264428062000@news.povray.org>:

>In article <8F61873E3dashixpressnet@204.213.191.228>, das### [at] x-pressnet 
>(daishi) wrote:
>
>> is it not possible in pov to render only a portion of the screen? if 
>> it is it should be possible to hack a simple script together to do 
>> network rendering. bmrt comes with a script that does this (have one 
>> comp render a portion of the screen, another comp render another 
>> portion, etc then all the images are assembled by an external 
>> program)
>
>It is possible to render a portion of an image, but getting the images 
>tiled without discontinuities is a problem. If you distribute parts of 
>an image to different machines this way, features like radiosity, 
>antialiasing, etc can produce a "tiles" effect, like a mosaiac 
>photograph.
>


but if you use the same settings on all the machines it shouldn't be an 
issue, should it?

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daishi wrote:

> but if you use the same settings on all the machines it shouldn't be an
> issue, should it?

Do you understand how anti-aliasing works ?

-- 
Ken Tyler - 1400+ POV-Ray, Graphics, 3D Rendering, and Raytracing Links:
http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html http://www.povray.org/links/

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