ShowAnimation - problem when using more than twice
- To: mathgroup at yoda.physics.unc.edu
- Subject: ShowAnimation - problem when using more than twice
- From: wilhelms at hip.atr.co.jp
- Date: Sun, 05 Sep 93 14:08:01 +0900
Among other things like cracking formulae, developing C code (using CForm[]), where I find mathematica very useful, I am using it to make short (up to 150 frames) animation movies of computational results. The animations consist in showing a deforming solid body, so I use about 60-100 3D polygons for each frame. This all works wonderfully when mathematica just does it the first few times. However, something bumps if one tries to repeat it in the same session with different data. This phenomenon looks like a fatique effect: bl = getAnimationData["file1",....]; (* home made, loads polygon lists *) ShowAnimation[bl]; (* works fine*) bl = getAnimationData["file2",....]; ShowAnimation[bl]; (* works fine*) bl = getAnimationData["file",....]; ShowAnimation[bl]; (* works usually fine*) ..... etc etc, the file is overwritten by some other homemade program that does nothing with mathematica. .... after maybe 3-20 times, I get this: bl = getAnimationData["file1",....]; ShowAnimation[bl]; (* .... *) The prompt comes back and the user anxiously awaits the appearance of the fancy animation window. Mathematica noodles the disk and obviously tries to re-arrange memory or whatever. It becomes more and more quiet after a while. After waiting for as long as I am patient I finally give up, quit mathematica, and restart it again. Everything works again. Of course, if the data file was too big, let's say 250 frames, I wouldn't be surprised that mathematica runs out of space for all the bitmaps, even though this is a sparc 10. If it really runs out of memory it usually complains, and at least says SOMETHING. In my case it just begins too softly sleep away. What happens? and What can be done to avoid the big reset every time? Any advice? Thanks in advance. Reiner