POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.general : Copying objects and memory Server Time
2 Aug 2024 18:10:42 EDT (-0400)
  Copying objects and memory (Message 1 to 3 of 3)  
From: Slime
Subject: Copying objects and memory
Date: 22 Aug 2004 23:59:54
Message: <41296bba@news.povray.org>
Well, I've been working on my submission for povcomp and I've run into a bit
of a problem.

I planned on constructing my scene in levels of detail. The lowest level of
detail is a series of simple objects. Then I've assembled lots of those into
a bunch of second-level objects. Finally, I'm combining tons of those to
create the scene.

Unfortunately, even though some of the lowest level objects are meshes, the
duplication of all of the second level objects to create the scene is using
a huge amount of memory. I've hit half a gig of RAM and I've only made about
1/10 as many objects as I planned to. (Actually, to some extent, making more
objects probably won't increase the memory usage too much since they'll just
replace copies of existing objects which take up about the same amount of
RAM.)

I need to reduce my memory usage. I've considered making lower-detail
versions of second level objects for the ones that will be really far away,
but even if that does help it might as much as double the amount of work I
have to do in terms of modelling, and I can't sacrifice *all* detail, so it
might not even help that much.

What I really feel that I need is a way to copy an object without actually
duplicating it, much like the way that mesh data is copied. I recognize that
this would come at the expense of some rendering speed (mainly because the
unions can't be split for bounding), but that doesn't bother me so much. Is
there a way to do this or an unnofficial version that supports it?

Or does anyone have any suggestions for me?

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


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From: William Pokorny
Subject: Re: Copying objects and memory
Date: 23 Aug 2004 08:13:13
Message: <4129df59$1@news.povray.org>
I have seen discussions about adding a reference to object feature to
povray, but I don't recall seeing any attempted implementations. Stating the
obvious - where you can, replace objects with meshes. Perhaps set your scene
file up to render in detail only in sub-regions selected by switches in your
SDL file. The high detail sub-images could then be glued together to form
the complete image.  Borrow a machine with the memory you need. In the unix
world especially, machines with 100s of gigabytes of memory exist  though it
can be hard to get time on them without spending money.

"Slime" <fak### [at] emailaddress> wrote in message
news:41296bba@news.povray.org...
>
> What I really feel that I need is a way to copy an object without actually
> duplicating it, much like the way that mesh data is copied. I recognize
that
> this would come at the expense of some rendering speed (mainly because the
> unions can't be split for bounding), but that doesn't bother me so much.
Is
> there a way to do this or an unnofficial version that supports it?
>
> Or does anyone have any suggestions for me?
>
>  - Slime
>  [ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]
>
>


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From: Josh
Subject: Re: Copying objects and memory
Date: 23 Aug 2004 11:49:06
Message: <412a11f2$1@news.povray.org>
Can your combination-objects not be converted to mesheseseses ( oops, went a
bit Golum there)


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