distributed rendering

[Christoph Fabianek]

Hi,

ok - I have now an implementation of the distributed rendering interface that 
works fine for me and includes user feedback and correct orientation.

The user feedback works as described in a previous mail, i.e., whenever a row 
of tiles is finished it is displayed which leads to a somewhat snatchy 
feedback but I think for remote rendering you can't get anything better. And 
there is always the option to look into the output window to see which 
machines are currently working.

As for the orientation of the images: it turns out that there are various TGA 
formats with different orientations - this is also fixed now.

I will also write some documentation today - could someone please send me the 
sources of the kpovmodeler docs or point me to the location where to download 
- I will update the section "POV-Ray Interaction".

Attached is the patch - I would be glad if someone would test it and give me 
feedback. Beside the patch you will need nspovray and optionally NetSolve 
(you may use SSH or NetSolve as transport for accessing other machines). 
Unfortunately, building nspovray from sources is currently a bit difficult 
since it requires NetSolve. So you have two choices:

- Download the binaries from
  http://fsmat.at/~cfabiane/software/nspovray_i686-pc-linux-gnu_0.4pre.tar.gz
  and unpack it into an empty directory. Afterwards use this directory as
  "nspovray Path" in the "Distributed Rendering" tab (Render Modes dialog) and
  specify the following agent: "netsolve.cs.utk.edu"
  see the screenshot for an example configuration:
  http://fsmat.at/~cfabiane/tmp/render_modes.png

- or you may download the sources and compile at first NetSolve
  http://icl.cs.utk.edu/netsolve/downloads/
  and then nspovray
  http://fsmat.at/~cfabiane/software/nspovray_src_0.4pre.tar.gz
  follow the instructions on 
  http://fsmat.at/~cfabiane/nspovray.html
  (this will take a few hours so I highly recommend using the binaries!)

Greetings,
   Christoph


PS: I just did a final test and I know - the machines currently in the 
NetSolve grid are really slow and the scheduler still doesn't distribute the 
load optimally... Hopefully, I can add some faster machines in the next days 
and the scheduler gets better before the release of NetSolve 2.0 scheduled 
within the next weeks.


On Friday 19 September 2003 11:48, az at azweb.de wrote:
> Hi Christoph!
>
> > I agree that with a render plugin framework and perhaps some other
> > architectural changes a cleaner support would be possible. But just
>
> trashing
>
> > my work and wait at least another year (in Nove Hrady it was looking
>
> like
>
> > that the next KDE version will be based on Qt 4) would be quite
> > unsatisfactory.
>
> That has nothing to do with trashing your work.
> KPovModeler was always released with stable, complete and well tested
> features. Your distributed rendering tool is not finished yet, as it
> doesn't give any direct feedback to the user.
> You have to understand me: We have one(!) week left for feature commits
> and string changes. If you realize in two weeks that the current POV-Ray
> rendering implementation is not suitable for your tool, we have no chance
> to change it any more.
>
> If you can finish a version until monday, 22 september, that has a user
> feedback and shows the image in correct orientation, then I will add it in
> this version.
>
> Greetings, Andreas
>
>
>
> List archive and information:
> http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kpovmodeler-devel
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