Updated 2021-05-17

Run POV-Ray on the Cluster

Overview

  • This guide will cover how to load and run povray/3.7
  • Povray has one dependent program, boost that must be loaded
  • POV-Ray on the cluster is used as a batch program, meaning you have a .pov or .ini input file that you execute through a PBS script. POV-Ray will compute the raytracing and return a .png image.

Summary

  • To load povray:
    • module load boost/1.51.0
    • module load povray/3.7
  • To run povray:
    • povray <.ini or .pov filename>

Walkthrough: Run POV-Ray on the Cluster

  • This walkthrough will produce a simple image of a cube embedded with a circle.
  • The example code is from the POV-Ray wiki
  • Input file: example.pov
  • PBS Script: povRay.pbs
  • To follow along, manually copy these files into the same directory in your account on the cluster, or transfer them to your account.

Part 1: The PBS Script

#PBS -N povrayTest
#PBS -A [Account]
#PBS -l nodes=1:ppn=2
#PBS -l pmem=2gb
#PBS -l walltime=1:00
#PBS -q inferno
#PBS -j oe
#PBS -o pov.out

cd $PBS_O_WORKDIR
module load boost/1.51.0
module load povray/3.7
povray example.pov
  • The #PBS directives are standard, requesting just 1 minute of walltime and 1 node with 2 cores. More on #PBS directives can be found in the PBS guide
  • $PBS_O_WORKDIR is simply a variable that represents the directory you submit the PBS script from.

Warning

Make sure the .pov file you want to run is in the same directory you put the PBS script.

  • Output Files, such as the resulting image, will also show up in the same directory as the PBS script
  • module load lines load the dependent programs as well as POV-Ray
  • povray example.pov executes POV-Ray

Part 2: Submit Job and Check Status

  • Make sure you're in the directory that contains the PBS script and the .pov file
  • Submit as normal, with qsub <pbs script name>. In this case qsub povRay.pbs
  • Check job status with qstat -u username3 -n, replacing "username3" with your gtusername
  • You can delete the job with qdel 22182721, replacing the number with the jobid returned after running qsub

Part 3: Collecting Results

  • In the directory where you submitted the PBS script, you should see a couple of newly generated files, including example.png and pov.out
  • Open example.png using any image viewer. On the cluster, type nautilus or gthumb. Either one works, and will open a gui with your files. Navigate to the folder where you submitted the PBS script, and click on the image example.png to open.
  • example.png should look like this:

Screenshot

  • After the result files are produced, you can move the image file as well as any other files off the cluster. Refer to the file transfer guide for help.
  • Congratulations! You successfully ran a POV-Ray program on the cluster.