xdart - X distributed Abe's raytracer
xdart works in conjunction with xdartd to render scenes
in the .art format. Not all features listed in the ART manual
will work with this program because the version of Abe's raytracer
that was modified to run distributed is very stale but hopefully
functional. Ordered scanning is the only mode supported.
This raytrace is distributed which means that you can use several machines
working together to render a single image.
Please be sure you know how to use the unix ps and kill commands to kill a
background process before you use this program, and be responsible in killing
daemons you start up.
How to use:
By default the program is configured to run on a single
machine which is both the client and server. To try out
xdart:
go to the xdartd directory and type
xdartd &
go back to the xdart directory and type
xdart NEW_GOLD.art
How to use multiple servers:
Step 1:
Figure out which machines you want to be xdart servers and
add their network address to xdart.servers
xdart.servers has the following format:
<port number>
<server address>
<server address>
...
<server address>
where port number is any unused legal TCP port and
the server addresses list the machines you are going to use.
Illegal names are ignored.
Step 2:
log into each of the servers and start an xdartd running
usually just by typing:
xdartd &
in the xdartd directory, be sure that xdartd.clients has the
the same port number as xdart.servers and that the machine
you will be running xdart on is listed in xdartd.clients
Step 3:
Type:
xdart NEW_GOLD.art
The image should now render using all the machines in xdart.servers
If you quit xdart the daemons will reset and continue to run. So you
will not have to fire up the daemons every time you rerun xdart.
Step 4:
Be sure to kill all the daemons on all the servers when you are finished
rendering since they consume system resources.
To learn how to kill process you put in the background type:
man ps
man kill
Usually I kill xdartd with:
% ps -aux | grep xdartd
spy 1548 0.0 3.0 1.83M 248K p1 SWN 0:00 xdartd
spy 1556 0.0 2.3 1.31M 192K p2 S N 0:00 grep xdartd
% kill 1548
More .art files are available via anonymous ftp at
castlab.engr.wisc.edu(128.104.52.10) in /pub/art_files
Please send comments and suggestions and significant bug reports to:
spy@castlab.engr.wisc.edu
Abe Megahed Email address: verbose@saavik.cs.wisc.edu
Mark Spychalla Secondary Email address: spy@saavik.cs.wisc.edu
Mark Spychalla
University of Wisconsin - Madison
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