What do most of you do when you want to see what happens in a scene if
you've included something heavy in it, like scattering media? In other
words, how do you adjust settings without going through a two hour render
just to see if the settings that you've adjusted are correct or not?

    I know I can turn AA off, and possibly remove many articles from the
scene, (not sure if this would actually speed things up though...)

    Any tips in this direction would be welcome.

     ~Steve~

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First, I set the resolution to 320 x 240 (or 160 x 120 if it's really slow)
and turn off anything that's unnecessary for testing the effect (including
AA and other objects in the scene which may take up lots of parsing or
render time). Then I'll one or both of the following:

A) I'll render it *without* whatever's making it slow, then hold shift and
select (click & drag) the part of the image that I want to test, and then
rerender so that only the important part of the image is rendered.

B) I add +SP64 to the command line. This gives a quick mosiac preview, which
usually gives me a good idea of what's going on in the picture.

With really heavy stuff, it can still take a minute or so to view, but I've
never really had to deal with unbearably long render times.

- Slime
[ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]
[ http://www.slimeland.com/images/ ]

"25ct" <25c### [at] lineonenet> wrote in message news:3bdf03d0@news.povray.org...
>   What do most of you do when you want to see what happens in a scene if
> you've included something heavy in it, like scattering media? In other
> words, how do you adjust settings without going through a two hour render
> just to see if the settings that you've adjusted are correct or not?
>
>     I know I can turn AA off, and possibly remove many articles from the
> scene, (not sure if this would actually speed things up though...)
>
>     Any tips in this direction would be welcome.
>
>      ~Steve~
>
>
>
>

Post a reply to this message

Slime wrote:

> First, I set the resolution to 320 x 240 (or 160 x 120 if it's really slow)
> and turn off anything that's unnecessary for testing the effect (including
> AA and other objects in the scene which may take up lots of parsing or
> render time). Then I'll one or both of the following:
> 
> A) I'll render it *without* whatever's making it slow, then hold shift and
> select (click & drag) the part of the image that I want to test, and then
> rerender so that only the important part of the image is rendered.
> 
> B) I add +SP64 to the command line. This gives a quick mosiac preview, which
> usually gives me a good idea of what's going on in the picture.
> 
> With really heavy stuff, it can still take a minute or so to view, but I've
> never really had to deal with unbearably long render times.
> 


Good advice.  I usually do all of the above, and will render a 
decent-sized image with all the slow options while I'm sleeping or at 
work and judge the results when I come back to the computer.

Build your scenes with a bunch of #declares at the top so it's easily 
changeable, such as:

#declare Photons = off;
#declare Radiosity = 1;  // 0 = off, 1 = fast, 2 = Whoa!!!
#declare Boring_Textures = on;
#declare Focal_Blur = off;

and then enclose the affected portions of the scene in an #if statement, 
like this:

#if( Boring_Textures )
    #declare My_Texture = texture{ pigment{ color rgb < 1, 0, 0 > }}
#else
    #declare My_texture = ...
#end

-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/*    flabreque    */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/*        @        */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/*   videotron.ca  */}camera{location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a orthographic}

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"Francois Labreque" <fla### [at] videotronca> wrote in message
news:3BD### [at] videotronca...
>
>
> Slime wrote:
>
> > First, I set the resolution to 320 x 240 (or 160 x 120 if it's really
slow)
> > and turn off anything that's unnecessary for testing the effect
(including
> > AA and other objects in the scene which may take up lots of parsing or
> > render time). Then I'll one or both of the following:
> >
> > A) I'll render it *without* whatever's making it slow, then hold shift
and
> > select (click & drag) the part of the image that I want to test, and
then
> > rerender so that only the important part of the image is rendered.
> >
> > B) I add +SP64 to the command line. This gives a quick mosiac preview,
which
> > usually gives me a good idea of what's going on in the picture.
> >
> > With really heavy stuff, it can still take a minute or so to view, but
I've
> > never really had to deal with unbearably long render times.
> >
>
>
> Good advice.  I usually do all of the above, and will render a
> decent-sized image with all the slow options while I'm sleeping or at
> work and judge the results when I come back to the computer.
>
> Build your scenes with a bunch of #declares at the top so it's easily
> changeable, such as:
>
> #declare Photons = off;
> #declare Radiosity = 1;  // 0 = off, 1 = fast, 2 = Whoa!!!
> #declare Boring_Textures = on;
> #declare Focal_Blur = off;
>
> and then enclose the affected portions of the scene in an #if statement,
> like this:
>
> #if( Boring_Textures )
>     #declare My_Texture = texture{ pigment{ color rgb < 1, 0, 0 > }}
> #else
>     #declare My_texture = ...
> #end

       That's great advice both. Thank you. The scene I'm on at the moment
is into it's seventh hour, and it's wrong! Eek! (BTW, it's 3 o'clock in the
morning here, a coldish room, and my CPU temp. is running at 40 deg c.
whilst rendering. A happy man!)   :)

    ~Steve~


>
> --
> /*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
> /*    flabreque    */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
> /*        @        */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
> /*   videotron.ca  */}camera{location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a orthographic}
>

Post a reply to this message

25ct <25c### [at] lineonenet> wrote in message <3bdf03d0@news.povray.org>...
>  What do most of you do when you want to see what happens in a scene if
>you've included something heavy in it, like scattering media? In other
>words, how do you adjust settings without going through a two hour render
>just to see if the settings that you've adjusted are correct or not?


For rough adjustment of a media-intensive scene, I'll often render at
resolutions as small as 80x60 or 30x40.  After the rough adjustments are
done, I'll render at a higher resolution for the fine adjustments, but only
render a small piece of the full scene at a time.

--
Mark

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"Mark Wagner" <mar### [at] gtenet> wrote in message
news:3bdf9c2f@news.povray.org...
>
> 25ct <25c### [at] lineonenet> wrote in message <3bdf03d0@news.povray.org>...
> >  What do most of you do when you want to see what happens in a scene if
> >you've included something heavy in it, like scattering media? In other
> >words, how do you adjust settings without going through a two hour render
> >just to see if the settings that you've adjusted are correct or not?
>
> For rough adjustment of a media-intensive scene, I'll often render at
> resolutions as small as 80x60 or 30x40.  After the rough adjustments are
> done, I'll render at a higher resolution for the fine adjustments, but
only
> render a small piece of the full scene at a time.

Same here, but 80x60 is my minimum in my Quickres.ini (Secondary INI).
Can use method 2 in MegaPOV, or v3.5 now, with very low samples and
intervals but it seldom gives an idea of what the media will look like with
better settings.

Bob H.

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