Hi,

I hope someone is able to help me.

I am quite new to POV-Ray, although I have known about it for 15-20 years.

When I'm trying to render a scene which takes more than a day to render, I use
the resuming option. I have read the documentation numerous of times, but I
can't really get it to work. In the QUICKRES.INI file (I have also tried the
command line options), I have added the following two lines:

Continue_Trace=on
Create_Ini=rerun.ini

When I start rendering, POV-Ray is creating the rerun.ini file as well as the
..pov-state file. The Messages tab also claims "Continued trace......On".

However, if I have stopped the rendering using the Stop button, and later
(doesn't matter if I have or have not closed POV-Ray) decide to continue, it
doesn't matter what I do. I can't resume from where I left off.

I have tried both command line, like the documentation suggests:

pvengine64.exe RERUN +C
(Also tried with rerun.ini instead of RERUN)

I have tried opening the .pov file in POV-Ray and pushing Run, as well as
opening the created rerun.ini file pushing Run.

Is there something I'm missing? Why doesn't POV-Ray continuing rendering my
scene from where it stopped earlier?

Regards,

Lennie

Post a reply to this message

On 26/01/14 18:33, IceflakeCS wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I hope someone is able to help me.
> 
> I am quite new to POV-Ray, although I have known about it for 15-20 years.
> 
> When I'm trying to render a scene which takes more than a day to render, I use
> the resuming option. I have read the documentation numerous of times, but I
> can't really get it to work. In the QUICKRES.INI file (I have also tried the
> command line options), I have added the following two lines:
> 
> Continue_Trace=on
> Create_Ini=rerun.ini
> 
> When I start rendering, POV-Ray is creating the rerun.ini file as well as the
> ...pov-state file. The Messages tab also claims "Continued trace......On".
> 
> However, if I have stopped the rendering using the Stop button, and later
> (doesn't matter if I have or have not closed POV-Ray) decide to continue, it
> doesn't matter what I do. I can't resume from where I left off.
> 
> I have tried both command line, like the documentation suggests:
> 
> pvengine64.exe RERUN +C
> (Also tried with rerun.ini instead of RERUN)
> 
> I have tried opening the .pov file in POV-Ray and pushing Run, as well as
> opening the created rerun.ini file pushing Run.
> 
> Is there something I'm missing? Why doesn't POV-Ray continuing rendering my
> scene from where it stopped earlier?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Lennie
> 
> 
Are you using photons and/or radiosity in your scene?

I could be wrong (I usually am) but if you are, photons and radiosity
will be recalculated when you restart your scene unless you have saved
the photon and radiosity files and then reloaded them when you restart
the scene. This (recalculation) will give the impression that the scene
is starting from scratch again.

BTW you don't need +C for the first part of your run, it's only needed
for the second and subsequent runs.

John
-- 
Protect the Earth
It was not given to you by your parents
You hold it in trust for your children

Post a reply to this message

On 27-1-2014 14:27, Doctor John wrote:

> Are you using photons and/or radiosity in your scene?
>
> I could be wrong (I usually am) but if you are, photons and radiosity
> will be recalculated when you restart your scene unless you have saved
> the photon and radiosity files and then reloaded them when you restart
> the scene. This (recalculation) will give the impression that the scene
> is starting from scratch again.
>
> BTW you don't need +C for the first part of your run, it's only needed
> for the second and subsequent runs.

Another thing: If you stop the render session while /parsing/ is still 
active, you cannot use +C. It only works /after/ parsing is completed 
and some parts of the image have been finished before you stop the render.

Thomas

Post a reply to this message

Doctor John <j.g### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> On 26/01/14 18:33, IceflakeCS wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I hope someone is able to help me.
> >
> > I am quite new to POV-Ray, although I have known about it for 15-20 years.
> >
> > When I'm trying to render a scene which takes more than a day to render, I use
> > the resuming option. I have read the documentation numerous of times, but I
> > can't really get it to work. In the QUICKRES.INI file (I have also tried the
> > command line options), I have added the following two lines:
> >
> > Continue_Trace=on
> > Create_Ini=rerun.ini
> >
> > When I start rendering, POV-Ray is creating the rerun.ini file as well as the
> > ...pov-state file. The Messages tab also claims "Continued trace......On".
> >
> > However, if I have stopped the rendering using the Stop button, and later
> > (doesn't matter if I have or have not closed POV-Ray) decide to continue, it
> > doesn't matter what I do. I can't resume from where I left off.
> >
> > I have tried both command line, like the documentation suggests:
> >
> > pvengine64.exe RERUN +C
> > (Also tried with rerun.ini instead of RERUN)
> >
> > I have tried opening the .pov file in POV-Ray and pushing Run, as well as
> > opening the created rerun.ini file pushing Run.
> >
> > Is there something I'm missing? Why doesn't POV-Ray continuing rendering my
> > scene from where it stopped earlier?
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Lennie
> >
> >
> Are you using photons and/or radiosity in your scene?
>
> I could be wrong (I usually am) but if you are, photons and radiosity
> will be recalculated when you restart your scene unless you have saved
> the photon and radiosity files and then reloaded them when you restart
> the scene. This (recalculation) will give the impression that the scene
> is starting from scratch again.
>
> BTW you don't need +C for the first part of your run, it's only needed
> for the second and subsequent runs.
>
> John
> --
> Protect the Earth
> It was not given to you by your parents
> You hold it in trust for your children

Thank you for your answer.

Even though I didn't know it at first, I was apparently using radiosity. The
thing is (at least with this render) I was using PoseRay, and PoseRay added the
following to the code:

#include "rad_def.inc

...and also

   #local p_start=64/max(image_width,image_height);
   #local p_end_final=2/max(image_width,image_height);
radiosity {
     pretrace_start p_start
     pretrace_end   p_end_final
     count 800
     nearest_count 5
     error_bound 0.05
     recursion_limit 1
     low_error_factor .5
     gray_threshold 0.0
     minimum_reuse 0.015
     brightness 1
     adc_bailout 0.01/2
}

...within the global settings.

So I added the Radiosity lines to the ini file, but I couldn't really get that
to work either. POV-Ray added the file, and started adding information to it.
But neither the radiosity file nor the pov-state file did grow very much in
size, and the resume function still didn't work as espected. Maybe I missed
something from the documentation, but I ended up removing the radiosity lines in
the .pov file instead. And I can't spot much differences between a render with
or without radiosity turned on.

Regards,

Lennie

Post a reply to this message

Hello Lennie,

some additional remarks.

1. Since you mentioned a start and a stop button, I assume you're using the
windows version. In this case you don't need an ini-file. Simply type +c into
the command line field (the one below the show-, ini- and sel-run-button) and
better do so for the second and all subsequent runs and not for the first, as
John suggested.

2. The radiosity settings you gave, have to be specified within the pov-file
within the global_settings. The inclusion of "rad_def.inc" seems to be redundant
here, since it is not used. The definitions of p_start and p_end_final are fine,
but produce long rendering times for the radiosity
step.

3. The parsing of the scene is not part of the "continue"-option. Every time you
you restart a Rendering with +c the whole scene will be parsed again.

4. For photons it is the best to save them during the first render, and load
them in subsequent ones.

5. radiosity can be saved with the first run, but you need other global settings
to load them. And an ini-file is needed in this case.

6. radiosity is recalculated with every retrace, but only the part which is not
rendered already.

7. The continue-option is still a bit buggy. Having a multi-core machine you are
only save if you stop the rendering when the rendered area is "closed" in a way.
That means, if you use the default render pattern, all blocks
left and above the last rendered block must be rendered. If one is missing, the
resume option will forget and not render it.
See

http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3C5239bc36%40news.povray.org%3E/?ttop=390778&toff=50

for an example.

Best regards,
Michael

Post a reply to this message

"MichaelJF" <mi-### [at] t-onlinede> wrote:
..
>
> 7. The continue-option is still a bit buggy. Having a multi-core machine you are
> only save if you stop the rendering when the rendered area is "closed" in a way.
> That means, if you use the default render pattern, all blocks
> left and above the last rendered block must be rendered. If one is missing, the
> resume option will forget and not render it.
I forgot to mention that +c only works with the default render pattern.

Sorry,
Michael

Post a reply to this message

"MichaelJF" <mi-### [at] t-onlinede> wrote:
> Hello Lennie,
>
> some additional remarks.
>
> 1. Since you mentioned a start and a stop button, I assume you're using the
> windows version. In this case you don't need an ini-file. Simply type +c into
> the command line field (the one below the show-, ini- and sel-run-button) and
> better do so for the second and all subsequent runs and not for the first, as
> John suggested.
>
> 2. The radiosity settings you gave, have to be specified within the pov-file
> within the global_settings. The inclusion of "rad_def.inc" seems to be redundant
> here, since it is not used. The definitions of p_start and p_end_final are fine,
> but produce long rendering times for the radiosity
> step.
>
> 3. The parsing of the scene is not part of the "continue"-option. Every time you
> you restart a Rendering with +c the whole scene will be parsed again.
>
> 4. For photons it is the best to save them during the first render, and load
> them in subsequent ones.
>
> 5. radiosity can be saved with the first run, but you need other global settings
> to load them. And an ini-file is needed in this case.
>
> 6. radiosity is recalculated with every retrace, but only the part which is not
> rendered already.
>
> 7. The continue-option is still a bit buggy. Having a multi-core machine you are
> only save if you stop the rendering when the rendered area is "closed" in a way.
> That means, if you use the default render pattern, all blocks
> left and above the last rendered block must be rendered. If one is missing, the
> resume option will forget and not render it.
> See
>
>
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3C5239bc36%40news.povray.org%3E/?ttop=390778&toff=50
>
> for an example.
>
> Best regards,
> Michael

Fantastic! Michael, and you others, thank you! This is all much clearer to me
now. I'm not just new to POV-Ray, but to 3D rendering overall. Trying out
different software and renderers at the moment, and I must say POV-Ray gives
really nice, characteristic, results.

Regards,

Lennie

Post a reply to this message

On 27/01/14 20:57, IceflakeCS wrote:
> 
> Fantastic! Michael, and you others, thank you! This is all much clearer to me
> now. I'm not just new to POV-Ray, but to 3D rendering overall. Trying out
> different software and renderers at the moment, and I must say POV-Ray gives
> really nice, characteristic, results.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Lennie
> 
> 

When you are ready to post them, I am sure we all would like to see some
of your images - since you seem to have long render times, they must be
fairly complex.

Welcome to the community.

John
-- 
Protect the Earth
It was not given to you by your parents
You hold it in trust for your children

Post a reply to this message

> Hi,
>
> I hope someone is able to help me.
>
> I am quite new to POV-Ray, although I have known about it for 15-20 years.
>
> When I'm trying to render a scene which takes more than a day to render, I use
> the resuming option. I have read the documentation numerous of times, but I
> can't really get it to work. In the QUICKRES.INI file (I have also tried the
> command line options), I have added the following two lines:
>
> Continue_Trace=on
> Create_Ini=rerun.ini
>
> When I start rendering, POV-Ray is creating the rerun.ini file as well as the
> ..pov-state file. The Messages tab also claims "Continued trace......On".
>
> However, if I have stopped the rendering using the Stop button, and later
> (doesn't matter if I have or have not closed POV-Ray) decide to continue, it
> doesn't matter what I do. I can't resume from where I left off.
>
> I have tried both command line, like the documentation suggests:
>
> pvengine64.exe RERUN +C
> (Also tried with rerun.ini instead of RERUN)
>
> I have tried opening the .pov file in POV-Ray and pushing Run, as well as
> opening the created rerun.ini file pushing Run.
>
> Is there something I'm missing? Why doesn't POV-Ray continuing rendering my
> scene from where it stopped earlier?
>
> Regards,
>
> Lennie
>
>

Apparently, you are using the Windows version.

Don't use +c when first starting the render, only on an interupted render.

Put +c in the command line box, then click the Run button.. It's the 
only thing you need to do.

Make sure that you resume using the SAME resolution that you used initialy.

If your scene use radiosity, the radiosity pretrace will be performed 
again, but only for the un-rendered part of your image.

If using photons AND you did NOT save the photons to a file anr reload 
that file, the photons shooting phase will need to be done again in it's 
totality.

You don't need to use any rerun.ini file.

I highly recomment that you remove
Continue_Trace=on
Create_Ini=rerun.ini
from your quickres.ini file. That file is to be used EXCLUSIVELY to 
store predefined image dimentions/resolution. Nothing else.

If you start from the console using pvengine64.exe RERUN, i don't think 
that you need the +c. In fact, it may be the cause of your problems...

So, just une +c in the command line box.



Alain

Post a reply to this message

Doctor John <j.g### [at] gmailcom> wrote:

>
> When you are ready to post them, I am sure we all would like to see some
> of your images - since you seem to have long render times, they must be
> fairly complex.
>
> Welcome to the community.
>
> John
> --
Seconded,
Michael

Post a reply to this message