Kenneth wrote:
> 
> Very interesting!  (My second guess as to this phenomenon was that the
> computer was having to "retrieve" or "clean out" memory it had used...which
> you've corroborated.) I'm happy (??) to know that it's not something to do
> with my own computer setup. Thanks for the info!

Actually that's not quite right.  It would not take that long to stop a 
render it you'd stop it by terminating the POV-Ray process.  You can 
check this by killing POV-Ray in the task manager - i assume it will 
usually not take long to do so.

This is one of the advantages of using the command line version - you 
don't have any problem cancelling a render.

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Landscape of the week:
http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/ (Last updated 24 Jul. 2005)
MegaPOV with mechanics simulation: http://megapov.inetart.net/

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Kenneth <kdw### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:
> Very interesting!  (My second guess as to this phenomenon was that the
> computer was having to "retrieve" or "clean out" memory it had used...which
> you've corroborated.) I'm happy (??) to know that it's not something to do
> with my own computer setup. Thanks for the info!

  OTOH your situation is rather unusual, still. I personally almost never
have had such problems even with larger scenes.
  How large is your scene exactly? How many objects?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Kenneth <kdw### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:
> > Very interesting!  (My second guess as to this phenomenon was that the
> > computer was having to "retrieve" or "clean out" memory it had used...which
> > you've corroborated.) I'm happy (??) to know that it's not something to do
> > with my own computer setup. Thanks for the info!
>
>   OTOH your situation is rather unusual, still. I personally almost never
> have had such problems even with larger scenes.
>   How large is your scene exactly? How many objects?
>
> --
>                                                           - Warp

A common example (for me) would be this:
1) Create a rather simple object in sPatch
2) Export to POV as an .inc file, containing a union of
Bicubic_patches...REDUCING the u_steps and v_steps from the default 3 down
to 1, so as to cut down on the number of triangles POV has to deal with.
3) #declare the object in my POV scene (only once), adding scaling and a
basic grey-scale 8-bit image map.
4) Place 40,000 of these objects randomly, using a trace operation inside a
#while loop, applying an extra semi-transparent random color overlay to
each one.

The render size is usually 720 X  540, at AA  0.1

I do realize that the semi-transparent textures are VASTLY increasing the
parsing and/or rendering times (and account for a lot of hard disk
activity.)

Any comments or suggestions?

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For those interested, I've come across another news thread that relates to
this question...
<42e7e533$1@news.povray.org>

Ken

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Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde> wrote:
> Kenneth wrote:
> >
> > Very interesting!  (My second guess as to this phenomenon was that the
> > computer was having to "retrieve" or "clean out" memory it had used...which
> > you've corroborated.) I'm happy (??) to know that it's not something to do
> > with my own computer setup. Thanks for the info!
>
> Actually that's not quite right.  It would not take that long to stop a
> render it you'd stop it by terminating the POV-Ray process.  You can
> check this by killing POV-Ray in the task manager - i assume it will
> usually not take long to do so.
>
> This is one of the advantages of using the command line version - you
> don't have any problem cancelling a render.
>
> Christoph
>

Thanks, Christoph, that works!!  Instead of 10 minutes, it now takes less
than 10 seconds.  Not bad!!  And without crashing the computer.  : )

I'm somewhat embarassed to admit that I've never used (or had to use?) the
TaskManager app.  So thanks for that tip in and of itself.

Stopping a render like this does raise a question in my mind, though: If
POV-Ray normally takes time to "clean out" (or "make available again"?) the
many small fragments of hard drive memory it has used, am I creating
"other" problems by terminating POV this way? So far, it doesn't seem
so...but I'm not Windows-saavy enough to know.

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"Kenneth" <kdw### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:
>
> Stopping a render like this does raise a question in my mind, though: If
> POV-Ray normally takes time to "clean out" (or "make available again"?) the
> many small fragments of hard drive memory it has used, am I creating
> "other" problems by terminating POV this way? So far, it doesn't seem
> so...but I'm not Windows-saavy enough to know.

I believe you very well could be causing other problems.  POV fills
available RAM, and then starts writing to the "swap file" on the hard disk.
 I have had these long shut-down times happen to me, on a new Athlon system
with a gig of RAM, usually when I am using photon mapping.  Sometimes
Windows will even increase the size of my swap file on the fly.  I would
assume that POV tries to be "tidy" and clean up the swap file before
exiting.  If not allowed to do so, will all that data just stay there
hogging disk space and slowing the system? I am not sure, but even on my
roomy 1600 gig drive I'd rather not take the chance.

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Kenneth wrote:
> 
> Thanks, Christoph, that works!!  Instead of 10 minutes, it now takes less
> than 10 seconds.  Not bad!!  And without crashing the computer.  : )

Just to make this clear - this was not intended as a suggestion for 
normal operation.  It was just meant to illustrate that the long time 
required to stop a render is not inevitable in general but only when you 
don't want to terminate the process at the same time.  There is no point 
in using the a GUI version of POV-Ray if you stop the render by killing 
the program.

> Stopping a render like this does raise a question in my mind, though: If
> POV-Ray normally takes time to "clean out" (or "make available again"?) the
> many small fragments of hard drive memory it has used, am I creating
> "other" problems by terminating POV this way? 

In any modern OS when a process is terminated - no matter which way - 
the allocated memory gets freed automatically (more precise: the address 
space of the process simply ceases to exist).

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Landscape of the week:
http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/ (Last updated 24 Jul. 2005)
MegaPOV with mechanics simulation: http://megapov.inetart.net/

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Christoph Hormann nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2005-10-04 11:07:
> Kenneth wrote:
> 
>>
>> Thanks, Christoph, that works!!  Instead of 10 minutes, it now takes less
>> than 10 seconds.  Not bad!!  And without crashing the computer.  : )
> 
> 
> Just to make this clear - this was not intended as a suggestion for 
> normal operation.  It was just meant to illustrate that the long time 
> required to stop a render is not inevitable in general but only when you 
> don't want to terminate the process at the same time.  There is no point 
> in using the a GUI version of POV-Ray if you stop the render by killing 
> the program.
> 
>> Stopping a render like this does raise a question in my mind, though: If
>> POV-Ray normally takes time to "clean out" (or "make available 
>> again"?) the
>> many small fragments of hard drive memory it has used, am I creating
>> "other" problems by terminating POV this way? 
> 
> 
> In any modern OS when a process is terminated - no matter which way - 
> the allocated memory gets freed automatically (more precise: the address 
> space of the process simply ceases to exist).
> 
> Christoph
> 
True if you run windows NT, 2000 or XP, also if using any Linux distro. FALSE if you
use Win 95, 98, 
SE or ME! Win 9x memory management just suck.

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
Lutheran: If shit happens, don't talk about it.

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Alain wrote:
> True if you run windows NT, 2000 or XP, also if using any Linux distro. 
> FALSE if you use Win 95, 98, SE or ME! Win 9x memory management just suck.

One word: nonsense.

	Thorsten

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Thorsten Froehlich <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:
> Alain wrote:
> > True if you run windows NT, 2000 or XP, also if using any Linux distro.
> > FALSE if you use Win 95, 98, SE or ME! Win 9x memory management just suck.
>
> One word: nonsense.
>
>  Thorsten

Hmm... there seems to be a very interesting difference of opinion(s) here.
: )   But I've learned something new from each and every post, so my
thanks to all.  I suppose I should do a bit of research on my own, to try
and understand the arcania of the Windows hard drive OS (...gee, what
fun...) so I can better
understand what's going on. But as I mentioned earlier, when shutting the
program down through the TaskManager per Christoph's suggestion (shall we
call it "terminating with extreme prejudice" ??)  there do not SEEM to be
any ill effects, at least on my Win98SE system,  So that seems a viable
option for me. Of course, I'd still appreciate hearing other opinions!

Thanks again, everyone!!

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