
                                R E N D V I E W
                              -------------------


RendView is a utility to have films rendered. 

Simply spoken it does the following: You give it a number of files to 
be rendered (i.e. f000000.pov .. f000123.pov, scene.pov, colors.inc) 
and then call RendView to have that done, either locally or in a LAN. 
RendView will then call the renderer (currently, only POVRay is supported) 
and (if told so) also a filter on the rendered frame. 

Of course, that's not all. Here is a list of features; please check the 
docu for more complete information and how to launch RendView. 

Features: 
--------

 - Little overhead. RendView is single-threaded and does no busy-waiting 
   at any time. 
 - Job control: ability to launch more than one render/filter job at a time 
   (i.e. if you have a dual processor SMP box you may want to use 2 processes 
   at a time). (-ld-njobs=)
 - LDR, Local Distributed Rendering: RendView implements an LDR client and 
   LDR server (in the same binary "rendview"). RendView as LDR server can 
   distribute rendering and filtering jobs to any number of LDR clients in 
   the local network. 
 - Continuing operation: RendView can only (re-)render/filter frames which 
   got modified, just like make(1) decides whether to (re-)compile a file 
   (-l-cont). 
 - Resume operation: for renderers which support that (POVRay), frames which 
   were rendered partly can be resumed (-l-rcont). 
 - Continuing and resume also work with LDR; required files are downloaded 
   automatically to the client, (un)finished output uploaded to the server. 
 - Lots of (colored) useful status and info output on the terminal. 
 - Lots of tuning options which can be passed on the command line or via 
   the environment vars RENDVIEWARGS/LDRCLIENTARGS/LDRSERVERARGS. 
 - Per-frame blocks: you can specify what shall be done on a per-frame basis 
   using frame number ranges (e.g. 10-19: use filter A, 5-12: render with 
   radiosity, 20-30: use filter B)
 - More features: execution, tidle and job timeouts, nice values, re-connect 
   lost clients, stop/cont, LDR authentification, load control, 
   POVRay frame clock support (+Kclockval). 


Please note (READ THAT COMPLETELY): 
----------------------------------

  RendView is distributed for free under the GPL. 
  If you use this program, you have to assist development by reporting 
  any bug you find.  And I mean that literally: 
  You get the software for free and in return you report any bug you find. 
  Please don't consider reporting bugs as something negative, dumb or stupid. 
  It's neither negative for you (bug gets fixed) nor for me (as the 
  programmer I want to provide a stable program). 
  Remember: good testing is as important as good programming. 
  
  Unfortunately, there ARE bugs in RendView (probably not few). 
  
  Bugs include (in order of decreasing severity): 
  - Segmentation fault / SIGSEGV. This is the most critical one. 
  - Failed assertions. Also severe; it means that a bug was caught in one 
    of the many bug traps placed all over the source code. 
  - Memory leaks: RendView uses more and more RAM (very unlileky) or fails 
    to clean up all allocated memory (in this case, it will tell you so). 
  - RendView does not what it should do: Hangs during operation, takes too 
    long breaks, spins idly around (busy-looping), ...
  - Missing warnings, typos in output, ...
  
  If you found a bug, please figure out how to reproduce it. Fixing a bug 
  which cannot be reproduced if very hard if not impossible. 
  
  For bug reporting, please send a complete bug report (platform, version, 
  comand line args and RENDVIEWARGS/LDRCLIENTARGS/LDRSERVERARGS env var 
  as well as the output (best with -verbose=+all)) together with description 
  on how to reproduce it directly to the author, wwieser at gmx dot de. 
  More info (known bugs) may be available on the RendView home page, 
  http://www.cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de/~wwieser/ani/rendview .


For build instructions, see BUILD in this directory. 
For installation instructions, see INSTALL. 
The GNU GPL can be found in COPYING in this directory. 


Have fun and enjoy RendView,
Wolfgang Wieser
