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From: Bill Pragnell
Subject: POV-Ray for Android
Date: 17 Jun 2021 16:25:00
Message: <web.60cbaf1456b8f4c4b96893c06f35e431@news.povray.org>
I compiled POV-Ray on my phone yesterday, partly because I had some inconvenient
time to kill with not much else to hand, and partly because why the hell not?!

I used Termux, the Android linux-in-a-can, and to my surprise it worked
perfectly, finding the Termux pkg versions of the dependencies notwithstanding.
Having produced the traditional mirrorball over checker, I ran the standard
benchmark scene, and then later also ran it on my laptop for interest:

Samsung Galaxy A51 : 6 minutes 47 seconds (3129 CPU-seconds total)
MacBook Pro (2012) : 7 minutes 57 seconds (1806 CPU-seconds total)

I guess I shouldn't be surprised; the phone is only a year or so old (albeit
mid-range), and has 8 cores vs the Mac's 2. However, it is faintly alarming that
my most powerful POV-Ray-capable machine is currently my phone :)

Bill


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From: clipka
Subject: Re: POV-Ray for Android
Date: 17 Jun 2021 16:33:29
Message: <60cbb199$1@news.povray.org>
Am 17.06.2021 um 22:23 schrieb Bill Pragnell:

> I used Termux, the Android linux-in-a-can, and to my surprise it worked
> perfectly, finding the Termux pkg versions of the dependencies notwithstanding.

Love to hear that!


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From: Mike Horvath
Subject: Re: POV-Ray for Android
Date: 18 Jun 2021 08:46:26
Message: <60cc95a2$1@news.povray.org>
On 6/17/2021 4:23 PM, Bill Pragnell wrote:
> I compiled POV-Ray on my phone yesterday, partly because I had some inconvenient
> time to kill with not much else to hand, and partly because why the hell not?!
> 
> I used Termux, the Android linux-in-a-can, and to my surprise it worked
> perfectly, finding the Termux pkg versions of the dependencies notwithstanding.
> Having produced the traditional mirrorball over checker, I ran the standard
> benchmark scene, and then later also ran it on my laptop for interest:
> 
> Samsung Galaxy A51 : 6 minutes 47 seconds (3129 CPU-seconds total)
> MacBook Pro (2012) : 7 minutes 57 seconds (1806 CPU-seconds total)
> 
> I guess I shouldn't be surprised; the phone is only a year or so old (albeit
> mid-range), and has 8 cores vs the Mac's 2. However, it is faintly alarming that
> my most powerful POV-Ray-capable machine is currently my phone :)
> 
> Bill
> 
> 


I wonder if you could turn a bunch of phones into a render farm.


Mike


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From: Bill Pragnell
Subject: Re: POV-Ray for Android
Date: 18 Jun 2021 09:10:00
Message: <web.60cc99fd19807c8ab96893c06f35e431@news.povray.org>
clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> Am 17.06.2021 um 22:23 schrieb Bill Pragnell:
>
> > I used Termux, the Android linux-in-a-can, and to my surprise it worked
> > perfectly, finding the Termux pkg versions of the dependencies notwithstanding.
>
> Love to hear that!

I had to install all the tools first naturally (make, automake, autoconf etc).
And no 'libboost-dev' etc - for Termux at least it's all in a single 'boost'
library; same for the others. No OpenEXR unfortunately.

Good to see you back in the loop, by the way!


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From: Mike Horvath
Subject: Re: POV-Ray for Android
Date: 18 Jun 2021 16:39:58
Message: <60cd049e$1@news.povray.org>
On 6/18/2021 8:46 AM, Mike Horvath wrote:
> On 6/17/2021 4:23 PM, Bill Pragnell wrote:
>> I compiled POV-Ray on my phone yesterday, partly because I had some 
>> inconvenient
>> time to kill with not much else to hand, and partly because why the 
>> hell not?!
>>
>> I used Termux, the Android linux-in-a-can, and to my surprise it worked
>> perfectly, finding the Termux pkg versions of the dependencies 
>> notwithstanding.
>> Having produced the traditional mirrorball over checker, I ran the 
>> standard
>> benchmark scene, and then later also ran it on my laptop for interest:
>>
>> Samsung Galaxy A51 : 6 minutes 47 seconds (3129 CPU-seconds total)
>> MacBook Pro (2012) : 7 minutes 57 seconds (1806 CPU-seconds total)
>>
>> I guess I shouldn't be surprised; the phone is only a year or so old 
>> (albeit
>> mid-range), and has 8 cores vs the Mac's 2. However, it is faintly 
>> alarming that
>> my most powerful POV-Ray-capable machine is currently my phone :)
>>
>> Bill
>>
>>
> 
> 
> I wonder if you could turn a bunch of phones into a render farm.
> 
> 
> Mike

Of course, when they're done rendering the ringtone plays.


Mike


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From: Mr
Subject: Re: POV-Ray for Android
Date: 18 Jun 2021 18:45:00
Message: <web.60cd205619807c8a6adeaecb3f378f2@news.povray.org>
"Bill Pragnell" <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> I compiled POV-Ray on my phone yesterday, partly because I had some inconvenient
> time to kill with not much else to hand, and partly because why the hell not?!
>
> I used Termux, the Android linux-in-a-can, and to my surprise it worked
> perfectly, finding the Termux pkg versions of the dependencies notwithstanding.
> Having produced the traditional mirrorball over checker, I ran the standard
> benchmark scene, and then later also ran it on my laptop for interest:
>
> Samsung Galaxy A51 : 6 minutes 47 seconds (3129 CPU-seconds total)
> MacBook Pro (2012) : 7 minutes 57 seconds (1806 CPU-seconds total)
>
> I guess I shouldn't be surprised; the phone is only a year or so old (albeit
> mid-range), and has 8 cores vs the Mac's 2. However, it is faintly alarming that
> my most powerful POV-Ray-capable machine is currently my phone :)
>
> Bill

Interesting analysis ! I keep getting such surprises these days, when the
machine I expect to give me the most trouble running POV / Blender actually
turns out better than I thought. It's all good incentive to get out of one's
comfort zone !

Could you help me improve this procedure:
https://wiki.povray.org/content/HowTo:Install_POV#Termux

I don't know if you were aware of it, and the machines are a bit different since
yours was 64 bits and mine 32.

However note that I have no expertise whatsoever yet in all of this, so if
something seems wrong with how I did it, please suggest me some changes to try
out. And otherwise, if the recipe just had to differ for you, could you specify
how/why in the discussion page?

Particularly interesting is the fact that your phone is literally the most used
on the planet so the procedure to build POV on it can have much added value to
this community ;-)

I had troubles to do the last "install" step after build, so had to use more
convoluted command lines to launch each render. do you have workarounds to this?

Thanks for your experiment ! Not that Vim plays nice to edit pov scenes with its
syntax highlight !  :-)


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From: Bill Pragnell
Subject: Re: POV-Ray for Android
Date: 20 Jun 2021 13:35:00
Message: <web.60cf7ba619807c8ab96893c06f35e431@news.povray.org>
"Mr" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Could you help me improve this procedure:
> https://wiki.povray.org/content/HowTo:Install_POV#Termux
>
> I don't know if you were aware of it, and the machines are a bit different
> since yours was 64 bits and mine 32.

I was not aware of this. I'll have a read through and detail what I did in the
discussion there.

> Particularly interesting is the fact that your phone is literally the most
> used on the planet so the procedure to build POV on it can have much added
> value to this community ;-)

I did not know this either! I actually find this slightly surprising - most
people I see using smartphones seem to have much larger flagship models, but
maybe I only notice heavy users or some other bias. The main reason I chose this
model was size (the larger phones are awkward in pockets for me etc).

> I had troubles to do the last "install" step after build, so had to use more
> convoluted command lines to launch each render. do you have workarounds to
> this?

If you don't have root access, you won't be able to grant permission to install
to the normal locations. The unix compile guide talks about installing as a
non-privileged user - you can specify an install location at the configuration
stage. This is what I did. You then just add that location to PATH and you
should be able to launch povray from anywhere.

> Thanks for your experiment ! Not that Vim plays nice to edit pov scenes with
> its syntax highlight !  :-)

Well I'm not really a terminal power user so I don't really have a preferred
editor. I should correct that at some point, but learning vim or emacs to a
productive level is some effort, especially through a six-inch screen :)

Bill


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From: Bill Pragnell
Subject: Re: POV-Ray for Android
Date: 20 Jun 2021 14:30:00
Message: <web.60cf889119807c8ab96893c06f35e431@news.povray.org>
"Bill Pragnell" <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> "Mr" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> > Could you help me improve this procedure:
> > https://wiki.povray.org/content/HowTo:Install_POV#Termux
>
> I was not aware of this. I'll have a read through and detail what I did in the
> discussion there.

Um, I don't have an account to edit the wiki, can anyone help me out with how to
create one? I guess an admin needs to give me access.


Also, further to the location/permission and ease of rendering, I think if you
use an .ini file and specify Output_File_Name = <dir>, the output file gets the
default name but written to <dir>. You can specify multiple .ini files when
running povray, so something like out.ini containing only that switch and
specified last will make sure the output goes where you want (i.e. where it can
be viewed easily!).

Bill


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From: Mr
Subject: Re: POV-Ray for Android
Date: 20 Jun 2021 15:35:00
Message: <web.60cf97b019807c8a6adeaecb3f378f2@news.povray.org>
"Bill Pragnell" <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> "Bill Pragnell" <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> > "Mr" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> > > Could you help me improve this procedure:
> > > https://wiki.povray.org/content/HowTo:Install_POV#Termux
> >
> > I was not aware of this. I'll have a read through and detail what I did in the
> > discussion there.
>
> Um, I don't have an account to edit the wiki, can anyone help me out with how to
> create one? I guess an admin needs to give me access.
>
>
> Also, further to the location/permission and ease of rendering, I think if you
> use an .ini file and specify Output_File_Name = <dir>, the output file gets the
> default name but written to <dir>. You can specify multiple .ini files when
> running povray, so something like out.ini containing only that switch and
> specified last will make sure the output goes where you want (i.e. where it can
> be viewed easily!).
>
> Bill

hi,
the "Discussion" tab at the very top, left of the page should normally allow any
user to input something there. If it does prompt you to create an account,
follow indications and normally your new account at the end should immediately
be able to add content to the Discussion page, just use the add signature button
at the end to more easily keep readable exchanges. Note that you may not be able
to post URL at first... But at some point if you do contribute, an admin will
indeed remove some of these limitations.

Your clue to the build as non privileged user will be very valuable. thanks.

About vim learning curve, it should just be ignored if you  can consider vim as
a viewer. Its default"NORMAL" mode is well suited to not modify a scene, and
Most of all its POV syntax highlight is AWESOME for a phone and even outside
Termux. Having Vim Touch also installed gives more flexibility for quick look to
a scene without launching the whole termux Panzer division.


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From: Bill Pragnell
Subject: Re: POV-Ray for Android
Date: 21 Jun 2021 12:50:00
Message: <web.60d0c1fd19807c8ab96893c06f35e431@news.povray.org>
"Mr" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> the "Discussion" tab at the very top, left of the page should normally allow
> any user to input something there. If it does prompt you to create an account,
> follow indications and normally your new account at the end should immediately
> be able to add content to the Discussion page

Possibly I'm just being dim, but I see no controls in the Discussion tab that
would allow editing or link to anything connected to editing. If I go to 'Log
in' I'm offered no option to create an account.

While it's fresh in my mind, I'll just list what I did here for now.

I installed the packages individually because I was reading up on each one as I
went, but I think what I did was equivalent to:

pkg upgrade
pkg install git make automake autoconf clang boost libjpeg libpng libtiff
git clone https://github.com/POV-Ray/povray

I notice the existing guide specifies imagemagick; I don't think this is
necessary for a minimal povray build, but it is useful and I presume it brings
the image libs with it. For my system, zlib was already installed, and openexr
doesn't seem to be available for Termux.

I followed the unix build instructions for non-privileged users, supplying an
install target directory under my home directory at configure:

cd povray/unix
../prebuild.sh
cd ../
../configure --prefix=/absolute/install/path COMPILED_BY="name <email>"
make
make install

Aside from --prefix, the default configure worked fine. Once the build had
completed, I then started looking for ways to streamline further tinkering.

The Termux wiki [https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Main_Page] is particularly helpful
in this regard; I soon found out about [termux-setup-storage] to enable writing
to communal areas of the device. I also found it necessary to create
~/.termux/termux.properties to add left/right arrows to the extra keys row (I
ended up using the example extra keys in the wiki).

I added my install location to PATH in ~/.bashrc so I could run POV-Ray from
anywhere in the file tree, and I can confirm that setting Output_File_Name to
storage/dcim/POVRay/ or similar sends the output to the standard images
directory.

I think that's everything!

Bill


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