I like to share my experience about the first animation I did with POV 3.5
(using SMPOV and ~6 GHz).

So as I was told kindly, I went to
http://povray.org/resources/links/3D_Animation_Utilities/
and decided to use (from all those) two utilities (the once most up :-):

a)  AVI-creator from  http://www.bloodshed.net/avi.html to prouce a raw AVI
b) avi2mpg1 from here: http://www.mnsi.net/~jschlic1/  to convert the (69 MB
AVI into a 5 MB MPG)
c) Because I have three PC's and 5 CPU's I rendered the source-BMP's with
POV 3.5 using SMPOV (http://www.it-berater.org/download.shtml).

Then I started to make my first OWN MPG.

So anyone who is intrested to do such thing can read here what troubles are
"on the way".

1. SCENE:
I decided to render the prism (source downloadable here:
http://www.it-berater.org/download.shtml ...)
with just a subtile change that makes the prism rotate nicely in the video:
***************
 box { // Cube002
    <-1, -1, -1>, <1, 1, 1>
    scale <1.5, 1.5, 1.1>
    rotate -clock
    translate  <-1.05, -1.05, 0.0>
  }
(watch the variable "clock" which is changed every frame a bit)
***************

2. RENDER:
(this part is mostly intresting for those who render the animations using
SMPOV because that speeds up the process a lot.
If you're not intrested in this part jump down to (4.).

I have three machines to render, two of them have each 2 CPU's( 1x1800+,
2x2GHz,2x800 PIII).
So I decided to split into 8 tiles with SMPOV cause I tried to prevent that
the 800 takes a job and
makes me wait till its ready, while all other CPU's are long time ready.

So after all exactly that happend. If the weakest machine gets the hardest
Job, you may wish you had choosen smaler tiles.
But this problem is not really a problem cause I can leave oth the weak
machine next time or make smaller tiles.

Next thing was: I decided that 3600 Frames would suit me fine. And of course
I used SMPOV,
cause my scene did not contain visible Radiosity-effects.

In SMPOV (Link below) its easy to put in the values for the animation:
Resolution: 320x200, 8 tiles but not stripes, the best is often 2*4
(Radio-Button: "Oct-render S").

Then "enable animation processing":
1 ... 3600 for frames and 0 ... 360 for initial & Final clock. The later is
the range clock-variable.
So I let it run, after all I realized that SMPOV together with POV-Ray
generates quiet a lot of files
in the COM-Folder (where all Temp-Files are generated through which the PC's
communicate with each other).

This happens when the picture is rendered in 8 tiles:
My calculation: 3600 Frames, for each Frame SMPOV generates
- 8 "ini-Files" with the "Job-description" for the renderagents on the
diffrent PC's/CPU's,
- 9 batch-files (one for each of the 8 tiles plus one for picpend.exe to
append all of the eight tiles to one picture (& copy it to its origin-dir)
makes together 60.000 Files. However after "cleanup" (when the process ends)
they are not left of course.
What happens is that it can take quiete a while for the COM-Folder to open
while the process runs.

3. WAITING & Restarting:
At that point i decided that it took quite to long and that I should stop it
and reduce the value for "Render depth" to 5.
However some of the processes were ready so there should have been already a
small movie for me even when I interrupt it.
So I  first had to close the renderagents an all machines before closing
POV. Otherwise Renderagent would
notices that POV is ready and starts a new Instance. Second stop POV-Ray on
all machines.
Now SMPOV noticeds that all instances ended, and (that is corect) strated to
append all the tiles to pictures.

Was nice to see that this even works very good in bigger projects.
However at that point the programm noticed that there were tiles missing.
(Of course they were missing cause I interrupted the process).
So I had two choices, wheter end the whole process or press around >1000
times "OK" :-) (one time for each missing tile).
However there are numerous tools out there that can press a button. I used


DBC\doer\OK ( DoButtonClick ...)
So after I saw a nice film in the TV I could go on.

4. MAKING THE AVI
Now I had 3600 BMP-Files in my source-folder. I thought o going on  making
the AVI with AVI-Creator.
What I realized next is that AVI-Creator does not allow to add more then
~200 Pictures in ONE STEP to himself.
And when doing this he exchanges the first and the last frame (maybe thats
good for something).
So I had to make 18 steps and echange a lot of files ... I asked myself if I
am really the first person to make a bigger video with this program.
No drag'n drop .. ok that gave me the chance to look the rest of the film
while my TT adds the films automatically.
A small script had to put the files (4 by 4 by 4 ...) till all 3600 are
added. Intreesting enough to see that if I add 4 pictures,
the first and last are not exchanged by AVI-Creator. As that is not of big
interest for most people, (the TT is not yet publicly avaiable
however it shall be soon) I place the script at the very end of this
message.

So that way I looked the rest of the film while the pictures are added to
avi-creator.
And ok, the AVI was created. It had around 69 MB at all. The first part of
the film was perfect
while at the end the missing tiles made some holes in the picture.

5. CONVERTING TO MPG
That part seemed to be more easy.. But it wasn't.
When creating the AVI I decided to make a frame-rate of 60. Now it showed up
that
avi2mpg1 only likes selected frame rates as example 30.

Good Luck, I had not to do that all by hand again. So I went back to Step 4
and created a new AVI with a framerate of 30.

Then I called this  "One-Liner" BATCH FILE to make an MPG from an AVI.

avi2mpg1 -n -m4 prism_160.avi

Which uses quite a lot of time even on a 2 Ghz CPU.

After all the resulting video has now 4,3 MB ! So I could sent it even with
e-mail anyone who wants to see it.
Currently I am using my experience out of this to make a newer, smaller
which shall be placed on my web-site.

What I can say is, that it looks really fine if that prism rotates ... & I
hope many of you can now use my experience from here to make own,
small mpg.

It works with POV-Ray 3.5 and it looks GREAT !

--Theo

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Distributed Network-Rendering or Local SMP-Rendering on all CPU's you have.
With SMPOV und POV-Ray 3.5. *   Download free at:
http://www.it-berater.org/smpov.htm
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------



VAR\$$FMB=20001

new:
VAR\$$FMA=prism-$$FMB
VIC\$$FMB
VAR\$$FMC=prism-$$FMB
VIC\$$FMB
VAR\$$FMD=prism-$$FMB
VIC\$$FMB
VAR\$$FME=prism-$$FMB

STW\tanitoolform\avi-creator
TMS\File
SMS\Add

STW\#32770\open pictures
SPC\edit\*
RST\"$$FMA" "$$FMC" "$$FMD" "$$FME"
TDL\100

STW\#32770\open pictures

MEL\

VIC\$$FMB
IVV\$$FMB<23601
GOTO new
EVV\

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 13 Nov 2002 18:41:00 +0100, "Theo Gottwald *"
<The### [at] t-onlinede> wrote:
> I like to share my experience about the first animation I did with POV 3.5
> (using SMPOV and ~6 GHz).
>
> So as I was told kindly, I went to
> http://povray.org/resources/links/3D_Animation_Utilities/
> and decided to use (from all those) two utilities (the once most up :-):

Try http://www.tmpgenc.net/

ABX

Post a reply to this message

Thanks for the tip. After I run it, it says there are 30 days left for
Mpeg2.
Have to try it with more time.

However ... here is the Download-Link for the current movies.

http://www.it-berater.org/shtmls/bild_02.shtml

--Theo

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Distributed Network-Rendering or Local SMP-Rendering on all CPU's you have.
With SMPOV und POV-Ray 3.5. * Download free at:
http://www.it-berater.org/smpov.htm

Post a reply to this message

"Theo Gottwald *" <The### [at] t-onlinede> wrote in message
news:3dd2da9f@news.povray.org...
> Thanks for the tip. After I run it, it says there are 30 days left for
> Mpeg2.
> Have to try it with more time.

The option to encode to Mpeg-2 will time out unless you register. However, this will
not
affect the ability to encode to Mpeg-1, which is what you want. Use this prog, it's
great.

Also, I'd advise you try VideoMach (www.gromada.com) which will create your mpeg-1
file from
the individual bitmap images, without the need to create a large uncompressed avi
first (as
will TMPGenc actually). You can continue to use it after the 30 day limit as long as
it's for
non-commercial purposes.

All the best,

Andy Cocker

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 14 Nov 2002 00:03:43 +0100 Theo Gottwald * wrote:

>However ... here is the Download-Link for the current movies.

  Nice work, thanks.

-- 
Alan
ako### [at] povrayorg
a k o n g <at> p o v r a y <dot> o r g

Post a reply to this message

Good tip, thanks Andrew !

--Theo

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Distributed Network-Rendering or Local SMP-Rendering on all CPU's you have.
With SMPOV und POV-Ray 3.5. * Download free at:
http://www.it-berater.org/smpov.htm

"Andrew Cocker" <mai### [at] andrewcockercouk> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:3dd2e813$1@news.povray.org...
>
> "Theo Gottwald *" <The### [at] t-onlinede> wrote in message
> news:3dd2da9f@news.povray.org...
> > Thanks for the tip. After I run it, it says there are 30 days left for
> > Mpeg2.
> > Have to try it with more time.
>
> The option to encode to Mpeg-2 will time out unless you register. However,
this will not
> affect the ability to encode to Mpeg-1, which is what you want. Use this
prog, it's great.
>
> Also, I'd advise you try VideoMach (www.gromada.com) which will create
your mpeg-1 file from
> the individual bitmap images, without the need to create a large
uncompressed avi first (as
> will TMPGenc actually). You can continue to use it after the 30 day limit
as long as it's for
> non-commercial purposes.
>
> All the best,
>
> Andy Cocker
>
>

Post a reply to this message

We've counted 25 Downloads since the link is up.
Thats quite a fast start.

--Theo

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Distributed Network-Rendering or Local SMP-Rendering on all CPU's you have.
With SMPOV und POV-Ray 3.5. * Download free at:
http://www.it-berater.org/smpov.htm

"Alan Kong" <ako### [at] povrayNO-SPAMorg> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:a936tugr62lo7rd4tkm7btu2ern2npon27@4ax.com...
> On Thu, 14 Nov 2002 00:03:43 +0100 Theo Gottwald * wrote:
>
> >However ... here is the Download-Link for the current movies.
>
>   Nice work, thanks.
>
> --
> Alan
> ako### [at] povrayorg
> a k o n g <at> p o v r a y <dot> o r g
>

Post a reply to this message

I've just tried videomach.

With videomach the making of a MPG is a question of just one "drag'n drop"
and two button clicks.

I installed it, started it, dropped my 720 BMP's directly into it, pressed
the process-button,
typed in the target-filename.

Much more easy then the other system !

The result (though has 1 MB more then the other - maybe better quality ?)
is really good and a mesagebox shows that it has been "corrected for windows
media-player"

So I think this is the wanted program for easy MPG-creating.

--Theo

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Distributed Network-Rendering or Local SMP-Rendering on all CPU's you have.
With SMPOV und POV-Ray 3.5. * Download free at:
http://www.it-berater.org/smpov.htm

"Andrew Cocker" <mai### [at] andrewcockercouk> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:3dd2e813$1@news.povray.org...
>
> "Theo Gottwald *" <The### [at] t-onlinede> wrote in message
> news:3dd2da9f@news.povray.org...
> > Thanks for the tip. After I run it, it says there are 30 days left for
> > Mpeg2.
> > Have to try it with more time.
>
> The option to encode to Mpeg-2 will time out unless you register. However,
this will not
> affect the ability to encode to Mpeg-1, which is what you want. Use this
prog, it's great.
>
> Also, I'd advise you try VideoMach (www.gromada.com) which will create
your mpeg-1 file from
> the individual bitmap images, without the need to create a large
uncompressed avi first (as
> will TMPGenc actually). You can continue to use it after the 30 day limit
as long as it's for
> non-commercial purposes.
>
> All the best,
>
> Andy Cocker
>
>

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 14 Nov 2002 07:47:47 +0100, "Theo Gottwald *"
<The### [at] t-onlinede> wrote:
> Good tip, thanks Andrew !

Sorry, Theo, but is it necessary you change subject with every post and write
there the same or similiar content as in post? You are quoting original
messages and continue the same problem so I think you can preserve subjects.

ABX

Post a reply to this message

I am viewing it in Outlook-Express, so I have all posts for one thing sorted
in a tree.
The subject itself does not distruct order here. Is it diffrent for
WEB-based systems ?

I changed subject, so someone can just see whats inside on a quick look.
Maybe is unconventional like that ?

--Theo
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Distributed Network-Rendering or Local SMP-Rendering on all CPU's you have.
With SMPOV und POV-Ray 3.5.* Download free at:
http://www.it-berater.org/smpov.htm

"ABX" <abx### [at] abxartpl> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:1fm6tus6q2sr00janb2rq91j79p8b3qg4s@4ax.com...
> On Thu, 14 Nov 2002 07:47:47 +0100, "Theo Gottwald *"
> <The### [at] t-onlinede> wrote:
> > Good tip, thanks Andrew !
>
> Sorry, Theo, but is it necessary you change subject with every post and
write
> there the same or similiar content as in post? You are quoting original
> messages and continue the same problem so I think you can preserve
subjects.
>
> ABX

Post a reply to this message