POV-Ray

Hello,

when I use an image_map within a pigment_map (for example only a half of a box gets the image_map), the image_map is not rendered correctly.

For example when I have this box (scene and images are attached)

box {
	0, 1
	pigment {
		gradient z
		pigment_map {
			[0.4 image_map { png "test.png" } ]
			[0.4 color Cyan ]
		}
	}
}

So on the front you should see the image of test.png (in the attached scene it’s just red).
But on some pixels of the front you see the cyan color of the distant half of the cube.

Rendering the scene mutliple times produces the same result.

Rendering the scene at 200×150 is sufficiant.

povray +W200 +H150 scene.pov

I tested it with 3.6.1 and 3.7.0 beta 32 on Linux

The following SDL code

sphere {0, 1 pigment {image_map {png "missing.png"}}

yields “render failed” in 3.7b25 and the position of the error
is not highlighted in source code, giving no clue what went wrong.
In 3.6 this yields “Parse Error: Cannot open PNG file”.

From post in povray.general (circa 29 september 2010: “Maximum Resolution of Renders?”)

The ultimate goal would be a 41000×41000 image. However each time I have attempted to render that Pov-Ray has crashed on
me. Even when using a single, simple test object (a plain white sphere that
should use a single pixel). So I think this is running into a program limitation
at present.

It won’t be for the faint hearted: a 30500 x 30500 does still produces the bug, but you’d better have 24 GB of true ram to test it.
(it’s a render of a few “real” minutes if you do not swap, for any very quick scene (a 305 x 305 in 0.117s moved to 220s for 30500×30500 on my system when corrected))

With core-dumped enable, the issue is pointed in the creator of PixelContainer.
The problem is due to the resize() parameter: despite the parameter being a size_t (8 bytes long on 64bits), the computation ( h * w * 5 ) use unsigned int for h & w (and signed int for 5).

As a consequence, the value of resize is computed as a signed int... havoc might happen when the signed bit (#31) is propagated to the #63 to #32 of size_t... vector does not enjoy a negative value for resize (and destroy itself: no iterator on coming soon call! hence the crash when the values in the vector are to be initialised)

30500²: (in hex)

1 15 3C 71 50 floats
4 54 F1 C5 40 bytes

Basic solution: promote the 5 to an unsigned long, forcing the computation to happen on unsigned long, avoiding promotion of silly sign-bit, and keeping the resize’s value as a good number.

aka: resize( w * h * 5) becomes resize ( w * h * 5ul )

This solution has been tested and seems fine (it’s just that in base/image/image.cpp, there is a lot of resize()!).
For all resize(), the “ul” must be added. (and that means also that resize( w * h ) must be rewritten as ( w * h * 1ul ). )

While testing if the png support was working, I tried 3.7.0rc3 on NetBSD-5.99.45/amd64, and had the following problems:

1. lseek64 (used in source/base/image/image.cpp) is not portable, and not necessary on NetBSD (off_t there is large-file-safe)
2. unix/Makefile.am doesn’t add -lboost_thread to povray_LDADD, which breaks linking the executable.
3. vfe/unix/platformbase.cpp uses CLOCK_THREAD_CPUTIME_ID, which is not provided on NetBSD (I hacked around it by defining the symbol to “0”, but that’s of course not a correct fix).
4. vfe/unix/platformbase.cpp uses CLOCK_PROCESS_CPUTIME_ID, which is not provided on NetBSD – it’s called CLOCK_REALTIME like on FreeBSD, so we could just add defined(NetBSD) to the FreeBSD case, except for point 3.
5. vfe/unix/vfeplatform.cpp uses WEXITSTATUS. For this, sys/wait.h should be included. The obvious fix is
#ifdef HAVE_SYS_WAIT_H
# include <sys/wait.h>
#endif
but this also needs a check in the configure script.

Fixing all this, I get it to build, but core dump when run against the demo file from http://www.csb.yale.edu/userguides/graphics/povray/demo.pov.html.
Backtrace is
Program terminated with signal 11, Segmentation fault.
#0 0x00000000004ac479 in boost::gregorian::date::date ()
(gdb) bt
#0 0x00000000004ac479 in boost::gregorian::date::date ()
#1 0x00000000004d29f7 in boost::gregorian::date::date ()
#2 0x0000000000479a85 in std::vector<std::string, std::allocator<std::string> >::operator= ()
#3 0×0000000000461570 in std::vector<std::string, std::allocator<std::string> >::operator= ()
#4 0x00000000004656c7 in std::vector<std::string, std::allocator<std::string> >::operator= ()
#5 0x00000000005efc9f in Imf::TypedAttribute<std::string>::typeName ()
#6 0x00000000005fd890 in Imf::TypedAttribute<std::string>::typeName ()
#7 0x00000000005fe5d8 in Imf::TypedAttribute<std::string>::typeName ()
#8 0x000000000045d6dc in std::vector<std::string, std::allocator<std::string> >::operator= ()
#9 0x00007f7ffd80d9cf in thread_proxy ()

from /usr/pkg/lib/libboost_thread.so.1.45.0

#10 0x00007f7ffd00b24e in pthreadcreate_tramp (cookie=<value optimized out>)
at /archive/cvs/src/lib/libpthread/pthread.c:473
#11 0x00007f7ff8871780 in _lwp_park50 () from /usr/lib/libc.so.12

Please advise on how to proceed.

I tried to render a candle’s flame (an object with interior made of emission media) against an Alpha background. In 3.6, the “flame” appears as a bright object against the alpha background; but in 3.7, the flame disappears against the alpha (as the attached scene will make clear, the “flame” is still visible against opaque background objects). I used the settings “Output_Alpha=true Output_File_Type=N”.

If there is another (better?) way to achieve a similar effect, I am open to using a work-around.

If the image is more than 1270 pixels wide or more than 720 pixels high, animation fails with a segmentation fault during the second rendered frame. This happens after parsing is complete and the .pov-state file is created. The last message line is the “[Rendering...]” line. (There is also a separate, but possibly related, issue that the output display does not work for these renders.)

On one occasion, POV-Ray hung, and I had to ctrl-Z kill -9 out of it.

On another occasion, instead of the segmentation fault, I got the message:

povray: xcb_io.c:140: dequeue_pending_request: Assertion `req == dpy->xcb->pending_requests' failed.
Aborted

There is no crash when -D is used.

I have not run an animation this large in Windows, so I don’t know if it’s a problem there.

Neither problem occurs in POV-Ray 3.6.1.

I used the following source code:

global_settings { assumed_gamma 1 }
light_source { <-1, 1, -1> * 1000, rgb 1 }
sphere { 2.5 * z, 1 pigment { red 1 } }

Platform

Libraries

When using mesh_camera type ‘0’

The first line of the mesh output seems to be repeated resulting in incorrect light colour values.

If the first line of the texture is skipped then the values seem to be correct.

The documentation states mesh_camera 0 should produce 1 pixel per index but it currently seems to produce 1 lighting pixel per face.

This output seems fairly meaningless as using this data for vertex colours (presumably the intention for mesh_camera 0) would result in a flat shaded model.

Logically it would make more sense to output 1 pixel per vertex instead of 1 pixel per face. Another solution might 1 pixel per face index (as per documentation) although POV would need to record which indices had already been computed otherwise it could end up duplicating computation.

At the moment I’ve written a code workaround for my exporter which produces a special mesh but this is obviously a much more complex solution to a fairly simple problem.

Output images are 0.5 pixels too right and 0.5 pixels too down (mesh_camera_bug.pov).

The error is cumulative when image files are used again as texture (run 10 times mesh_camera_bug_reuse.pov).

This can be compensated by adjusting UV maps (mesh_camera_fix.pov and mesh_camera_fix_reuse.pov).

Tested with and without anti-aliasing.

I would like to suggest an additional feature regarding splines. POV-Ray’s spline objects (spline {}) are very useful to create animation paths as a function of time from reference points; however, in many cases you do not only need a position to place an object correctly, but also its velocity etc., e.g. if you are animating a car moving along a spline you do not only need to know where the car is at a given clock value but also in which direction it is going. If you want to rotate the wheels correctly you even need to know how this direction is currently changing.

In a nutshell, if you are using splines to create an animation path, you might not only need the spline value itself, but also the value of its first and second derivative. So I suggest adding an SDL capability to access these values like it is possible to access the spline value for a given parameter.

I do not think it would be too difficult to add a feature like this as far as the backend is concerned, since for computing a (cubic) spline you need the first and second derivatives anyway. (They are probably not being stored separately, but a polynomial is not that hard to differentiate.)

Indeed I do not know how an SDL language construct for it should look like (i.e. whether to use ' and ‘’ like in mathematics or a second spline function parameter).

In POV-Ray’s documentation it says:

3.2.2.2 Max Image Buffer Memory
This INI parameter sets the number of megabytes of RAM to allow for output image caching. If the output image happens to use more than this, a file backed temporary image is used instead.

I used this INI file option because the default value (128 megabytes) seemed insufficient. pov-state backend files were always created and they were remarkably larger than the resulting image (bmp) files. Consequently, I set

Max_Image_Buffer_Memory = 3096

in the INI file so that POV-Ray should, according to the documentation, now be able to use 3 gigabytes of RAM so no backend temporary file would be needed at all (this large they were never).

However, while POV-Ray was rendering I still discovered a pov-state file and it still had a similar size.

Now I am confused: did the INI option not work or have I misunderstood the documentation? If the former is the case, that would be a bug, wouldn’t it?

I tested both under Windows XP and Debian 6.0.5.

The following editor issue experienced in 3.7 RC 6 under Win7/64::

Place the curser at the middle of a row.
Press enter. Now the line has been split and the cursor is at the beginning of the new line, followed by the rest of the original line
Press backspace.
Instead of restoring the original line, the second part of the line disappears.

RC 3 under Vista/32 (and earlier versions) behave normally.

This is an annoying little bug in the Windows GUI:

Installed 3.7 RC07 on Windows 8.
No previous povray installation on this machine.

How to reproduce error :

- Open a file in the editor.

- Right click on the files tab. This opens a popup menu showing “Open containing folder/Copy file to clipboard/....”.

-Now each selection in this menu does open the containing Folder. I cannot close or run any of the other actions in this menu.

Due to a recent thread in povray.general (7th September 2013), I dive
into the code of height field creation.

There is 2 TODO in source/backend/support/imageutil.cpp, for
image_height_at() (circa line 512)

The first one is about using the index of palette-image: As far as *257
would indeed perform a better job to cover the full range than *256, it
would break backward compatibility with previous versions of povray (3.6
included) which only promoted the index as the Most significant byte,
keeping the least one at 0.

But on the second one, the new formula is plain wrong: (r*255+g)*255
should be (r*256+g)*255.
In previous versions, r*255 was the Most significant byte, and g*255 was
the least one.
Ergo, the value was r*255*256 + g*255, which can and should be only
factored as (r*256+g)*255;

I know it is damn late in the release schedule, but can that be either
be fixed before final official delivery or a memo added to the release
note that it would be fixed later and backward-bug will not be
maintained for that specific point (using rgb-8 or less bit per
channel-image for height field)

(it was not bugged in 3.6.1 nor before, it’s just that tiny little bit
of 3.7 that would should that bug)

If you look carefully at the attached pictures (povray +I... +H700 +W700 +A0.01) of scene and scene36, there is a significant difference at the top.
With 3.6, it matched exactly (hence the noise on the top pixels row) the view.
With 3.7, it cannot reach the top and leave a white area
(another difference is the slope on the side are also a bit more lower with 3.7, easier to spot when alternating the display of both pictures)

If you want to regenerate hf.png, it was rendered with povray 3.7RC7, +W400 +H400 +A0.01 +Ihf.pov

The white line at the bottom is expected, as the minimal value of the height field is “full green”

can not run POV-Ray on ubuntu 14.04, boost 1.54,

./configure COMPILED_BY=”Dmitry <my>”

...

Libraries
---------
checking whether to link with cygwin DLL... no
checking whether to enable static linking... no
checking for the pthreads library -lpthreads... no
checking whether pthreads work without any flags... no
checking whether pthreads work with -Kthread... no
checking whether pthreads work with -kthread... no
checking for the pthreads library -llthread... no
checking whether pthreads work with -pthread... yes
checking for joinable pthread attribute... PTHREAD_CREATE_JOINABLE
checking if more special flags are required for pthreads... no
checking for boostlib >= 1.37... yes
checking whether the Boost::Thread library is available... yes
checking whether the boost thread library is usable... no
configure: error: in `/home/di/workspace2/povray-3.7-stable':
configure: error: cannot link with the boost thread library

log in attach file

Hi,

I think I may have found a bug in the subsurface/radiosity features of Povray 3.7 attached image showing the issue and sample files required to reproduce. The original files (on povray forum images thread) had different radiosity settings but these ones show the problem and only take a few seconds to render the image without AA so probably better for bug fixing/testing etc.

Thanks

Sean

The following paraboloid renders correctly:

intersection
{ quadric { <1, 0, 1>, <0, 0, 0>, <0, 1, 0>, -1 }
  cylinder { 0, y, 1 }
}

However, when I extend the clipping cylinder downward:

intersection
{ quadric { <1, 0, 1>, <0, 0, 0>, <0, 1, 0>, -1 }
  cylinder { -y, y, 1 }
}

the object disappears completely in POV-Ray 3.7 and 3.7.1. In POV-Ray
3.6.1, it renders as expected.

POV-Ray 3.7.0.unofficial (self-compiled with g++ 4.8, but completely unaltered)
POV-Ray 3.7.1-alpha.8150025.unofficial
openSUSE 13.2 GNU/Linux

This scene file illustrates the problem:

// +w480 +h240
#version 3.6; //[sic]

global_settings { assumed_gamma 1 }

camera
{ location <0, 1, -7.5958>
  look_at <0, 1, 0>
  right 2 * x
  up y
  angle 43.1038
}

#default { finish { diffuse 0.6 ambient rgb 0.15618 } }

light_source
{ <-4.3125, 9.6250, -7.4695>,
  rgb 6856.3
  fade_power 2 fade_distance 0.10417
  spotlight point_at <0, 1, 0> radius 45 falloff 90
}

box
{ -<9, 11, 9>, <9, 11, 9>
  pigment { rgb 1 }
}

plane
{ y, 0
  pigment { checker rgb 0.05 rgb 1 }
}

intersection
{ quadric { <1, 0, 1>, <0, 0, 0>, <0, 1, 0>, -1 }
  cylinder { 0, y, 1 }
  pigment { green 0.5 }
  translate <-1.25, 1, 0>
}

intersection
{ quadric { <1, 0, 1>, <0, 0, 0>, <0, 1, 0>, -1 }
  cylinder { -y, y, 1 }
  pigment { green 0.5 }
  translate <1.25, 1, 0>
}

On the right side, there should have been a cylinder capped with a paraboloid. A thread has been started in povray.bugreports. Jerome has started to look at it.

In unix distribution these scripts

• allscene.sh
• allanim.sh
• porfolio.sh

have the variable VERSION set to 3.6

The commands:

povray +i /home/ronis/Nm=500/povray.00001.pov

or

povray +i/home/ronis/Nm=500/povray.00001.pov

fail with: povray: this pre-release version of POV-Ray for Unix expires in 2 day(s) and 1 hour(s)
Failed to parse command-line option

Going to the directory and simply running: povray +i povray.00001.pov
works.

I came across this by accident trying to get emac’s povray mode to work; apparently it passes the full path name to povray.

I don’t think there is a problem in 3.6.1

After a recent update on the POV-Wiki the GuMax skin doesn’t recognize MediaWiki:Common.css entries.

When rendering a series of scenes (e.g. animation, or render queue in POV-Ray for Windows), number_of_waves is not properly reset to its default value between scenes, causing the parameter to default to the value set by the previous scene.

For instance, rendering the following scenes from a queue will cause “arches.pov” to be rendered differently the second time:

1. scenes\textures\finishes\arches.pov
2. scenes\textures\normals\normavg.pov
3. scenes\textures\finishes\arches.pov (again!)

The parser does not accept mesh objects (or CSG objects including a mesh object) as a parameter to the inside() built-in function, reporting error “Solid object identifier expected”, even if the mesh is “solidified” by specifying an inside_vector.

(see news://news.povray.org:119/4a983716@news.povray.org)

Trace level is not handled properly with blobs using per-component reflective or refractive textures, leading to lockups. Stepping through the code, it seems that POV-Ray fails to properly mark the blob object as increasing the trace level.

(Until this bug is fixed, the issue can be worked around in most cases by assigning a reflective texture to the blob as a whole.)

Add a way to get and set font metrics.

Attached an image that shows what I’m talking about.

Thanks!!

Improve native support for 2D primitives. Ideally a 1:1 mapping of SVG primitives/shapes. They go a long way to making diagrams look a lot better. Having to create image maps based on externally created bitmaps slows the workflow down a lot!

In POV-Ray 3.6 (including 3.62), checker and cells patterns are off by 0.001 (1e-3) units, as can be demonstrated with this scene:

camera {
  location  <0.0, 0.0, -5.0>
  direction 1.5*z
  right     x*image_width/image_height
  look_at   <0.0, 0.0,  0.0>
}

box { <-1,-1,0>, <0,0,1> pigment { checker color rgb 1 color rgb 0 scale   0.2 translate <-0.5,-0.5,0> } finish { ambient 1 diffuse 0 } }
box { < 1, 1,0>, <0,0,1> pigment { checker color rgb 1 color rgb 0 scale   0.2 translate < 0.5, 0.5,0> } finish { ambient 1 diffuse 0 } }
box { < 1,-1,0>, <0,0,1> pigment { checker color rgb 1 color rgb 0 scale 200.0 translate < 0.5,-0.5,0> } finish { ambient 1 diffuse 0 } }
box { <-1, 1,0>, <0,0,1> pigment { checker color rgb 1 color rgb 0 scale 200.0 translate <-0.5, 0.5,0> } finish { ambient 1 diffuse 0 } }

The same can be demonstrated for the cells pattern.

POV-Ray 3.7 beta 34 is “clean”.

The configure script for unix uses a dumb string compare to test whether libpng version is 1.2.5 or higher, leading it to reject (for instance) libpng 1.2.27 and unnecessarily compile and statically link the older libpng version it comes with.

Scenes starting with the incorrect syntax

version 3.7;

do not raise an error, instead they render a black screen with an empty scene warning.
#version should fail with an error when the # is missing.

Windows 7, Home Premium 64bit
In Options/Editor Window/Editor Preferences/Language Tabs
saving a tab size of 4 does not work - on restart it reverts to the default of 8

In Options/Editor Window/Editor Preferences/Misc
saving a Line numbering style of Decimal and a Start number of 1, does not work, on restart the defaults are restored.

When I try to re-render the insert menu bitmaps,on the Windows version 3.7b36 there is an error with the
Shapes.pov file.
line 474: Parse Error: Unexpected additional ‘.’ in floating-point number

line 474 is:

<2.6, 0>, <3.6.9>, <4, 1.1>, <3.4, 2>, <3, 1>, <2, 1>

The second vector has two decimal points
Change to <3.6,.9>

The #switch directive isn’t parsing correctly. In the following construct NO warning or error is generated:

#switch (RF)

case (0)
	rotate z*355
#break
case (144)
	rotate z*7.5
#break
case (216)
	rotate z*5
#break

#end

RF is a variable passed to the macro in which this construct resides. The first ‘case’ action IS executed, but none of the others are on successive calls to the macro. If I properly add ‘#’ to the second case the 1st and 2nd condition are executed but not the last. If ‘#’ is REMOVED from any of the break directives an error is generated and parsing halts.

POV-Ray 3.7 does not show output options, such as:

Output Options
  Image resolution 640 by 480 (rows 1 to 480, columns 1 to 640).
  Output file: D:\foo\test.png, 24 bpp PNG
  Graphic display......On  (gamma: 2.2)
  Mosaic preview.......Off
  CPU usage histogram..Off
  Continued trace......Off

(the above is what 3.6 used to show)

Mosaic preview display didn’t work as expected, given these command line options: +sp64 +ep16. The preview was solid colored instead of the coarse preview that you’d expect.

I’ve tested a fix to unix/disp_sdl.cpp from clipka and it appears to work.

The included scenes\advanced\benchmark.pov (v1.02)is different then the winpov menu render\run benchmark (v2.01).

The winpov menu render\run benchmark is missing some objects, turned off in early betas?

Assuming there are no performance issues, it would be nice to tell Povray to select the pixels to render randomly, so that the image gets filled in gradually instead of from top to bottom and from left to right.

Also, maybe an option to tell it to render every Nth pixel.

Request #BREAK statement inside #WHILE and #FOR loops.

In POV SDL it can sometimes be ambiguous what exactly a macro returns. An explicit #RETURNS statement would make this unambiguous.

Currently, arrays may contain only one object type. Would be nice to eliminate this restriction and allow arrays to contain objects of different types.

There are various scripts around the Net meant for approximating things like isosurfaces and parametric objects using meshes. It would probably run bit faster and be easier to use if this were supported natively within Povray. The feature would require an additional object parameter in order to toggle this behavior on/off.