It's been a long time since I've done much POV (like since I put POVAFX32
together back in the day), but I've downloaded the latest & I'm messing
with some stuff now.  Bad news is I keep getting bad crashes while trying
to run POV on my computer.  I'm trying to do some animation work (play)
with height fields.  POV will intermittently crash while tracing the pov
file included below.  I've tried adjusting resolution, changing the
tga/gif/jpg height file, and several other things with no luck.  Sometimes
it'll make it all the way through the animation rendering & sometimes it
doesn't.

I'm running POV-Ray 3.6 for Windows (32 bit) on my AMD Athlon64 3200+
machine with 1GB RAM & plenty hard drive space.  Physical memory available
during the renderings seems ok.  I ran memtest on my RAM & it checks ok.
I've tried uninstalling & reinstalling with no luck.  I can run POV for
hours on other files without any issues.

The animation options for rendering test.pov are: +KI0 +KF140 +KFI0 +KFF20
If you don't use these, the object starts off the rendered portion, so
you'd have to put in a value for "clock" in the pov file.  It's crashed
with & without rendering multiple frames.

The crashes are not always the same.  Sometimes POV reports an unhandled
exception in it's own window & recommends closing the program.  Sometimes
the computer hangs.  Sometimes the computer shuts completely down & reboots
as if I just hit the reset button.  And twice I've gotten a blue screen of
death (BSOD).  The error on the BSOD was:  IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL.  Not
fun.

The files needed are here:
http://www.thedukes.org/pov/test.pov  (also included below)
http://www.thedukes.org/pov/patch5_border2.jpg

It's very weird.  Any ideas?

Thanks!
-Bryan
http://www.thedukes.org/

//------start pov file
//Patch test POV file by Bryan Duke bry### [at] thedukesorg
//+KI0 +KF140 +KFI0 +KFF20  <--command line options for animation

#include "colors.inc"
#include "textures.inc"
#include "metals.inc"

global_settings { assumed_gamma 2.2 }

camera {
   location  <0, 0, -5>
//   direction <0, 0, 1>
   look_at   <0, 0, 0>
}

light_source { <-15, 30, -25> color red 1 green 1 blue 1 }
light_source { < 15, 30, -25> color red 1 green 1 blue 1 }


background { colour SkyBlue }

//declare rotations for patch height maps
#if (clock>50)
   #declare rotate_x = clock+50;
   #declare rotate_y = 90-clock+50;
   #declare rotate_z = 90-clock+50;
#else
   #declare rotate_x = 0;
   #declare rotate_y = 90;
   #declare rotate_z = 90;
#end

#declare Patch = union{


  height_field {
    jpeg "patch5_border2.jpg"
    water_level 0.1
    smooth
    pigment { color red .9 green .9 blue .9  }
    scale <2, .2, 2>
    rotate rotate_x*x
    rotate rotate_y*y
    rotate rotate_z*z
//    translate <-.50, 6, -.5>
    translate <-1*(clock/140), 1, -3.5+(clock/40)>

    }

  }

  Patch
//------end pov file

Post a reply to this message

"bryan" <bry### [at] thedukesorg> wrote in message 
news:web.4529e3464445cd55cde7f9360@news.povray.org...

> The files needed are here:
> http://www.thedukes.org/pov/test.pov  (also included below)
> http://www.thedukes.org/pov/patch5_border2.jpg
>
> It's very weird.  Any ideas?

     I ran your code with no problems on 3.6. Have you checked your virtual 
memory? When I ran the code, I found mine set on 'No Paging File'.

      ~Steve~


>
> Thanks!
> -Bryan
> http://www.thedukes.org/

Post a reply to this message

>     I ran your code with no problems on 3.6. Have you checked your virtual 
> memory? When I ran the code, I found mine set on 'No Paging File'.
I didn't have any problem with running this in 3.6 either...

I'm not sure about the final line "Patch", normally I'd use object{Patch} 
for
#declared objects.

Post a reply to this message

Thanks for the help with this.  I checked my page file settings & memory
available during rendering & both seem fine (about 400MB free RAM during
rendering).  I changed the pov file last line to be object{Patch}.  Still,
no change in the behavior on my desktop PC.  I rendered an animation series
& 4 frames into it, my computer hung (nothing works...just plain locked up).

I installed POV-Ray 3.6 on my laptop & everything works perfectly with the
same pov & image files.  Grrrr.

So, I'm thinking maybe there's a corrupt file somewhere on my desktop.  I
tried uninstalling & reinstalling (again!), but no luck.  If I don't use a
height_field, my desktop POV runs normally.  Anyone have an idea of a dll
that might be getting called during height_field number crunching that I
can delete/reinstall manually?

Thanks,
-Bryan

Post a reply to this message

"bryan" <bry### [at] thedukesorg> wrote:
> Thanks for the help with this.  I checked my page file settings & memory
> available during rendering & both seem fine (about 400MB free RAM during
> rendering).  I changed the pov file last line to be object{Patch}.  Still,
> no change in the behavior on my desktop PC.  I rendered an animation series
> & 4 frames into it, my computer hung (nothing works...just plain locked up).
>
> I installed POV-Ray 3.6 on my laptop & everything works perfectly with the
> same pov & image files.  Grrrr.
>
> So, I'm thinking maybe there's a corrupt file somewhere on my desktop.  I
> tried uninstalling & reinstalling (again!), but no luck.  If I don't use a
> height_field, my desktop POV runs normally.  Anyone have an idea of a dll
> that might be getting called during height_field number crunching that I
> can delete/reinstall manually?

There is nothing wrong with POV-Ray, there is something wrong with your
computer. An application cannot make a properly working system crash. Most
likely your system has a cooling problem. While most programs will hardly
require any processing power, the prolonged running under full load, like
you do when rendering an animation, causes your system to overhead and then
results in random system failures. Get your system fixed, and POV-Ray will
run just fine. Repeated installing and unstinatlling POV-Ray or any other
software will not fix your hardware!

Post a reply to this message

web.452b210263ca0cdd8968e2cd0@news.povray.org...
> There is nothing wrong with POV-Ray, there is something wrong with your
> computer. An application cannot make a properly working system crash. Most
> likely your system has a cooling problem. While most programs will hardly
> require any processing power, the prolonged running under full load, like
> you do when rendering an animation, causes your system to overhead and
then
> results in random system failures. Get your system fixed, and POV-Ray will
> run just fine. Repeated installing and unstinatlling POV-Ray or any other
> software will not fix your hardware!
>
I second that, maybe you could have a look at the CPU heat sink, it could be
full of dust and tar.
Or the fan doesn't work properly.

Marc

Post a reply to this message

I checked all that & cleaned about a little bit of stuff...still crashes.  I
run other stuff at 100% CPU load all the time (eg. seti@home) & never have
had any problems.  Maybe I'll try POV with less than 100% CPU allowed.
I've monitored CPU temps during the runs & they don't seem any different
with & without height fields (or between POV & any other high CPU use
program).

Anyway, it's something wrong with my computer (software or hardware).  For
now I'll stick with POV on my (slower) laptop.

Thanks!

Post a reply to this message

It's a good idea to run something like
Ccleaner to fix registry stuff once in a while.
http://www.ccleaner.com/

You might want to try a memory diagnostic, it
may be hardware,
http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

but I'd suspect a driver, maybe run windows update.
or run sfc /scannow to check for corrupt system
files (if you have the windows CD).
http://www.updatexp.com/scannow-sfc.html

Post a reply to this message

Thanks Tim, I'll give that stuff a try!

-Bryan

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