This last Version has
- fixes some minor bugs (about not deleting unneeded files after the
process)
and it
- contains the " /RENDER" - tip from Thorsten.

Of course it has the NEW RenderAgent with the "Minimize-Feature".

So you can put it where you want even if there are whitespaces in the path.

Secondly a word to Radiosity:

Thorsten is definitely right.

I have rendered those pictures he adviced me to do and there are visible
artifacts.

However if you see them or if they just dissapear in the picture depends
heavily on the "tiling"
( 3x3 / 25x25 or 1/3) and it depends on the scene itself.

I have some picture examples (~40 k) I can sent with mail anyone who want to
see them.

Please do not intermix Radiosity and Raytracing (which is the method most
pictures are calculated).
Radiosity is a technology to make surfaces "shine" on nearby surfaces (true
?) to give them a more natural touch. While the raytracing technology is
relatively old, the radiosity is still a new technology and there may be
future changes in POV-Ray.

So its just good for giving scenes an final (more natural) "touch".
Depending on what you want to do, you need it or not.

For most scenes in the POV-Distribution Radiosity is not needed as far as I
know.

--Theo

Post a reply to this message

news: 3d5bfc2a@news.povray.org...

> For most scenes in the POV-Distribution Radiosity is not needed as far as
I
> know.

Hi Theo
You seem extremely enthusiastic and very willing to offer something great to
the Pov-Ray community, and this is always very appreciated.
However, if you want people to really like and support your work, I think
that it will be very useful if you spent time actually using Pov-Ray and
developing scenes, and learning how people really use it, and what needs and
requirements they have. Browse the Pov-Ray galleries, browse the image
forums, browse the IRTC. This can take time, but believe me, this is really
necessary. I'm insisting on that, because I'm always puzzled that most of
the discussions or proposals about distributed or shared rendering seem to
tend to ignore how people use the software. To overlook radiosity, memory
requirements, or file sizes, for instance, is very typical. A few weeks ago,
I was contacted by university folks who didn't even know whether their
Povray renderfarm supported radiosity... Isn't reading the manual a minimal
requirement when developing stuff like that ? I just don't get it. It's like
building airports without bothering to check what planes are supposed to
land there.

If you ask people (and particularly advanced users), you will find that
radiosity scenes that gobble large amounts of RAM and drain the CPU are
exactly the sort of scenes that they'd be happy to render using a
renderfarm. As far as I'm concerned, lack of radiosity support for such a
system is useless.
So unless you want to use your system for demonstration purposes only, I
suggest that you take a break from development, plunge headfirst into the
manual and work for a couple of months on actual Pov-Ray scenes.

G.

--

**********************
http://www.oyonale.com
**********************
- Graphic experiments
- POV-Ray and Poser computer images
- Posters

Post a reply to this message

Thanks for the comment, gilles.

I know thats your reality and between the lines I've read that many
"advanced users" - however not all-
think like that.

If they render mostly radiosity-things, they cannot use SMPOV it for the
finaly scene or they may have
artifacts in the picure.

My own copy of SMPOV (that helps me as a beginner to get my pictures faster)
is
running round the clock, rendering pictures, with and without radiosity.

So my reality IS diffrent and there may be users out there who want to use
it as well as I use it.

It's like with anything in the world. use it - or leave it. If you're not
shure try it.

If you look the pictures on my WEB-Site you see the sort of stuff I want to
render.
It does not need radiosity and even radiosity would not be good for the
typical


There are those peoples out there you talk about, so there is a comment on
my WEB-page and then
in the Readme.txt-File i have written what they can expect when using
"general scene lighting calculations" while rendering the scene "in tiles".


CPU's cause I wrote it for myself and I like it.

I am not an professional artist and I don't know what stuff they do render.
I did nowhere say that SMPOV CAN render "the unpossible" cause it does NOT
render anything in fact but give the job's "small in tiles" to multiple
copies of POV-Ray.

I've downloaded some scenens from the link sites on the povray.org homepage.
Maybe I downloaded those that are my taste ... however they did not use
radiosity and they all rendered perfectly, in less then half the time.  That
was all I wanted.

Its your good right to want more. Ok. sit down and code. However I doubt it
will be an add-on then you have to struggle with the source code and you
have to be better then the original people working on that :-) ...

Have much fun with rendering while that !
--Theo

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Distributed Network-Rendering auf bis zu 600 PC's mit SMPOV und POV-Ray 3.5
Download ab sofort bei http://www.it-berater.org/smpov.htm






"Gilles Tran" <tra### [at] inapginrafr> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:3d612b50@news.povray.org...

> news: 3d5bfc2a@news.povray.org...
>
> > For most scenes in the POV-Distribution Radiosity is not needed as far
as
> I
> > know.
>
> Hi Theo
> You seem extremely enthusiastic and very willing to offer something great
to
> the Pov-Ray community, and this is always very appreciated.
> However, if you want people to really like and support your work, I think
> that it will be very useful if you spent time actually using Pov-Ray and
> developing scenes, and learning how people really use it, and what needs
and
> requirements they have. Browse the Pov-Ray galleries, browse the image
> forums, browse the IRTC. This can take time, but believe me, this is
really
> necessary. I'm insisting on that, because I'm always puzzled that most of
> the discussions or proposals about distributed or shared rendering seem to
> tend to ignore how people use the software. To overlook radiosity, memory
> requirements, or file sizes, for instance, is very typical. A few weeks
ago,
> I was contacted by university folks who didn't even know whether their
> Povray renderfarm supported radiosity... Isn't reading the manual a
minimal
> requirement when developing stuff like that ? I just don't get it. It's
like
> building airports without bothering to check what planes are supposed to
> land there.
>
> If you ask people (and particularly advanced users), you will find that
> radiosity scenes that gobble large amounts of RAM and drain the CPU are
> exactly the sort of scenes that they'd be happy to render using a
> renderfarm. As far as I'm concerned, lack of radiosity support for such a
> system is useless.
> So unless you want to use your system for demonstration purposes only, I
> suggest that you take a break from development, plunge headfirst into the
> manual and work for a couple of months on actual Pov-Ray scenes.
>
> G.
>
> --
>
> **********************
> http://www.oyonale.com
> **********************
> - Graphic experiments
> - POV-Ray and Poser computer images
> - Posters
>
>
>

Post a reply to this message

Theo Gottwald * wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> It's like with anything in the world. use it - or leave it. If you're not
> shure try it.
> 

It's your right to think this way, but you should notice most successful
extensions and tools developed around POV-Ray (and of course POV-Ray
itself) are written with respect to the demands and wishes of those
actually using the program.  Therefore most of us are used to getting 'an
open ear' when suggesting technical improvements.  If you say "i don't
need it, therefore i won't implement it" that's fine, just don't expect
anyone to use the program.


> CPU's cause I wrote it for myself and I like it.

Gilles made an important point about that, you can't seriously recommend
your tool if you don't have some realistic experience using POV-Ray.  This
includes writing your own scenes with several hundred megabyte of data and
memory use for example.

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, IsoWood include,                 
TransSkin and more: http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/  
Last updated 13 Aug. 2002 _____./\/^>_*_<^\/\.______

Post a reply to this message

Hi Chris

Let me first tell you, that I take your and the comment from Gilles really
serious and also think about them.

Its not that I am not intrested about what people say. However he did not
try the program and so
he comments something that he think about not the real thing that you can
download there.

You can use Radiosity and still use SMPOV with an 100% result.  If ... IF
you have more then 1 picture to
render. Anyone who uses the program should knows that.
Therefore I recommend anyone first to try it and then to comment it.

HOW ?
Simply tell the program to make only 1 TILE out of each file.

Then SMPOV sends the WHOLE Picture to the diffrent render-CPU's wheter they
are local or they are remote, so long they are currently free.
Therefore all Radiosity calculations are perfect and still all CPU's stay
busy, without you having to worry about that.

Simply put all the pictures in the SMPOV-Que and on the next morning look
the results.
If you don't want "tiling" you can still serve up to 4 CPU's using the
actual SMPOV-Version.

This is not "the real thing". However its the logical consequence of the
history
 of SMPOV and my contact with POV-Ray as an exampel for many
who have SMP-Mainboards and look for programms beeing able to use them.

Its in no-way a judgement about anyone who may know things better out of
experiences in his field
 of (view) work.

History:
Last version of POV-Ray  I had (and used) was on the AMIGA 1000.

Then long time I used other programms which had SMP-Support.

Lastly I found about that POV supports "photons" and therefore true
refraction
even if its "simulated".
I always wanted to use that in my pictures, so I switched to POV as a
person who is really new to that stuff how it is actual.

I quickly found that POV does not use the processors, and though noone told
me that there is the
"SAB-Renderfarm" already avaible (just didn't find that link that time), I
begun to do something
myself and for myself, however in mind that if its ready, and I like it, I
would share it with people.
I do that with all tools I make till now (see my homepage).

So this is where we are. I have no knowledge about radiosity or
possibilities, even theoretical HOW I could solve that problems. If someone
can explain that to me, I can think about IF I can put it in there.

At the moment I am using my freetime, to learn and to understand the
language from POV and I use SMPOV for quickly getting pictures out.
That is what is NOW. And it works really good.

Comment:
What I did here was just what the FAQ about SMP-Support  "you can only start
two instance, each rendering a part of the picture" (FAQ about POV and
Multiprocessing). Show me a theoretical way to make it better, then I'll
think if I can implement that. Its NOT that I don't WANT to support special
features. I just don't know enough about HOW.

Future:
Currently I sent the code to Michael Vickery (he is as new with POV as
myself but he also likes the resulting pictures as I do) however he'll make
a PicPender version thats not ore dependent on any runtimes even under W9x,
so I can remove the 1 MB runtimes from the downloads-page and then no
installation will be required for noone.

 I've no idea if he has plans to make other changes in the code, but he may
do so, AFTER he tested the programm himself and therefore has not only
theoretical knowledge of the program, but also a "feeling" how it is to use
it practically.

And last - but not least ...

***
are written with respect to the demands and wishes of those
> actually using the program.  Therefore most of us are used to getting 'an
> open ear' when suggesting technical improvements
***

I agreee100%  to you about that. If I had been upolite with my last reply I
may excuse at this point
and push a bit of that to my bad english :-).

I rather tried to explain that I see no way to implement that with my
current knowledge.
And I tried to explain that that may change if someone can tell me HOW to do
it.
But SO LONG thats not the case ...its usable -as is-.And its better to have
it then NOT to have it
as my personal experience.

 If anyone can explain me a technical -clear- possibility to make SMPOV
better,
I'll maybe do that (after i understood it).

***
you can't seriously recommend
> your tool if you don't have some realistic experience using POV-Ray
***
My experience is with the scenes that are supplied with the
standard-distribution of
POV-Ray. I can render 90% of them faster then anyone else using SMPOV & POV
3.5.

That does NOT include the Radiostity-scenes (if the artifacts are a
problem)... but still 90% scenes left.
I render them in less then half the time they render on my Athlon 2000+ .
Isn't that worth a recommendation ?

I have 1 GB RAM here in this PC, if thats enough give me those files,
however
they are not part of the distribution and so I don't know how I shall
include them in my
decisions.

One last word. I really did that tool primarily for myself, not for selling
it and not for
getting popular. And I believe that those meals that you cook primarily for
yourself
are not the worst.

At last I hope you see that I am always open for comments, critics and
ideas.

--Theo


"Christoph Hormann" <chr### [at] gmxde> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:3D61FD55.7BE1B259@gmx.de...
>
>
> Theo Gottwald * wrote:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > It's like with anything in the world. use it - or leave it. If you're
not
> > shure try it.
> >
>
> It's your right to think this way, but you should notice most successful
> extensions and tools developed around POV-Ray (and of course POV-Ray
> itself) are written with respect to the demands and wishes of those
> actually using the program.  Therefore most of us are used to getting 'an
> open ear' when suggesting technical improvements.  If you say "i don't
> need it, therefore i won't implement it" that's fine, just don't expect
> anyone to use the program.
>

> > CPU's cause I wrote it for myself and I like it.
>
> Gilles made an important point about that, you can't seriously recommend
> your tool if you don't have some realistic experience using POV-Ray.  This
> includes writing your own scenes with several hundred megabyte of data and
> memory use for example.
>
> Christoph
>
> --
> POV-Ray tutorials, IsoWood include,
> TransSkin and more: http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/
> Last updated 13 Aug. 2002 _____./\/^>_*_<^\/\.______

Post a reply to this message