In article <web.40aa75bc27c58a6a6b9afb860@news.povray.org> , "CFM" 
<nomail@nomail> wrote:

> That's odd. I'm using POV-ray version 3.5. The tutorial that came with
> version 3.5 said that the older versions required the manual creation of
> separate frames in a sequence, each frame with its own name. The tutorial
> said that the new version I'm NOW using doesn't require that, anymore. The
> tutorial said that I do not need a separate batch script and no external
> sequencing programs.

You are confusing batch scripts and INI files.  INI files store the render
options.  The manual explains how to use INI files.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich
e-mail: mac### [at] povrayorg

I am a member of the POV-Ray Team.
Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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> >Ok, yes, you can use the command line parameters to specify both file
> >type, the number of frames, etc. I am used to using the GUI and frankly
> >never saw any real point to running it from the command line, so
> >basically using the command line in this case is just like using the INI
> >file. All the INI file really does is provide POVRay with the command
> >line options in a file you can run from the GUI. The results are exactly
> >the same.
> >
> >
> In the windows version, there is a "command line" box nexe to the quick
> res drop-list. For a 20 frame animation you just put +kff20 there, start
> the render, sit back, and you get your 20 frames animation.
> You can input parameters far longer than what you can see in the box,
> separate each parameters by a space.
> Look section 5.2.1 (Animation Options) in the documentation.
> +kfi<val> = initial frame
> +kff<val> = final frame
> +ki<float> = initial clock
> +kf<float> = final clock
> +sf<val> = start subset frame (+sf0.<val> for % position)
> +ef<val> = end subset frame
> +kc = cyclic animation
>
> Alain

OK, I rendered the POV-ray file clockdemo.pov, and the program renders the
20 frames, one after the other. I don't consider that an animation. It's
too slow. I still cannot figure out how to use TMPGEnc to run it in faster
speed. If TMPGEnc only compresses multiple frames with different file names
into a running video stream, then it would not work in this case since all
20 frames are created in just one file: clockdemo.pov. It looks to me that
the version of POV-ray that I'm using renders multiple frames in only one
file. It's not one frame per file, but 20 frames in a single file. So if
TMPGEnc won't work with this, then what will?

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in news:web.40abc81027c58a6ac3f22c770@news.povray.org CFM wrote:

> It looks to me that
> the version of POV-ray that I'm using renders multiple frames in only
> one file. It's not one frame per file, but 20 frames in a single
> file. 

There is no official version of POV-Ray that renders all frames into one 
single file (and no un-official onne that I know off). 

Are you looking in the right directory for the resulting images?

In your povray.ini file, is there a line that starts with 
Output_File_Name=...? If so, what does the whole line look like?


Ingo

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In article <web.40abc81027c58a6ac3f22c770@news.povray.org>, nomail@nomail 
says...
> > >Ok, yes, you can use the command line parameters to specify both file
> > >type, the number of frames, etc. I am used to using the GUI and frankly
> > >never saw any real point to running it from the command line, so
> > >basically using the command line in this case is just like using the INI
> > >file. All the INI file really does is provide POVRay with the command
> > >line options in a file you can run from the GUI. The results are exactly
> > >the same.
> > >
> > >
> > In the windows version, there is a "command line" box nexe to the quick
> > res drop-list. For a 20 frame animation you just put +kff20 there, start
> > the render, sit back, and you get your 20 frames animation.
> > You can input parameters far longer than what you can see in the box,
> > separate each parameters by a space.
> > Look section 5.2.1 (Animation Options) in the documentation.
> > +kfi<val> = initial frame
> > +kff<val> = final frame
> > +ki<float> = initial clock
> > +kf<float> = final clock
> > +sf<val> = start subset frame (+sf0.<val> for % position)
> > +ef<val> = end subset frame
> > +kc = cyclic animation
> >
> > Alain
> 
> OK, I rendered the POV-ray file clockdemo.pov, and the program renders the
> 20 frames, one after the other. I don't consider that an animation. It's
> too slow. I still cannot figure out how to use TMPGEnc to run it in faster
> speed. If TMPGEnc only compresses multiple frames with different file names
> into a running video stream, then it would not work in this case since all
> 20 frames are created in just one file: clockdemo.pov. It looks to me that
> the version of POV-ray that I'm using renders multiple frames in only one
> file. It's not one frame per file, but 20 frames in a single file. So if
> TMPGEnc won't work with this, then what will?
> 
> 

Umm. What??? Try looking in the folder with clockdemo.pov. Unless you 
have changed the master file (povray.ini), then by default all 'frames' 
are outputed into that same folder as clockdemo1.bmp, clockdemo2.bmp, 
clockdemo3.bmp, etc. These are the actual animation that gets generated.

Lets put it this way.. Think of the clockdemo.pov file like a set of 
instructions for a photographer. You give him a folder named "clockdemo", 
which contains the instructions on 'what' to photograph (clockdemo.pov). 
However, your sticking a post-it note on the outside (your command line 
options), and telling him to ignore the instruction in the folder 
(clockdemo.ini). He takes out the .pov instructions, sets up his camera 
in front of the stuff it tells him to take pictures of, then starts 
snapping photos according to your instructions on the post-it note. Each 
photo he takes (he is using a Polaroid, so the develop themselves each 
time one is snapped), he numbers it and drops it into the folder. Once he 
has all twenty, he hand the folder back to you, with each of the numbered 
photos in it.

I think what is confusing you is that POVRay only 'takes' the snapshots 
and shows the one 'currently in front of the camera'. It doesn't have any 
way to look at all the ones it previously took. You need a program like 
Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, Gimp, etc. to look at each of the snapshots. 
What TMPGEnc does is take each of those individual snapshots and stick 
them together into a movie. The images needed to do this are *not* in the 
clockdemo.pov file, but they 'should' be in the same folder though and be 
numbered 1 through 20.

If they are not there, then try looking in a couple of other places. The 
first place to look, if you are running it using the command line thing 
'inside' POVRay is in the directory POVRay itself runs from. It is 
possible, since you are not using the normal method of running it, that 
it could be placing them there instead, but I doubt it. If you are 
running it from a DOS window, try looking in the same place as you ran it 
from in there. If you still can't find it, then look in povray.ini for 
the line:

Output_File_Name= ...

If this line exists, then it should only contain a directory. All images 
you create with POVRay will be created in 'that' folder. Normally this 
line is empty or blocked out so it doesn't do anything. I don't remember 
which. In any case, someplace, somewhere you have a set of files called 
clockdemo1.bmp through clockdemo20.bmp or something similar. If all else 
fails, open a DOS window and type "dir clockdemo*.* /s/p". If the files 
are anywhere on you hard drive, it will find them. TMPGEnc needs the 
'first' one of those files, **not** the .pov file.


-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

Post a reply to this message

> Umm. What??? Try looking in the folder with clockdemo.pov. Unless you
> have changed the master file (povray.ini), then by default all 'frames'
> are outputed into that same folder as clockdemo1.bmp, clockdemo2.bmp,
> clockdemo3.bmp, etc. These are the actual animation that gets generated.
>
> Lets put it this way.. Think of the clockdemo.pov file like a set of
> instructions for a photographer. You give him a folder named "clockdemo",
> which contains the instructions on 'what' to photograph (clockdemo.pov).
> However, your sticking a post-it note on the outside (your command line
> options), and telling him to ignore the instruction in the folder
> (clockdemo.ini). He takes out the .pov instructions, sets up his camera
> in front of the stuff it tells him to take pictures of, then starts
> snapping photos according to your instructions on the post-it note. Each
> photo he takes (he is using a Polaroid, so the develop themselves each
> time one is snapped), he numbers it and drops it into the folder. Once he
> has all twenty, he hand the folder back to you, with each of the numbered
> photos in it.
>
> I think what is confusing you is that POVRay only 'takes' the snapshots
> and shows the one 'currently in front of the camera'. It doesn't have any
> way to look at all the ones it previously took. You need a program like
> Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, Gimp, etc. to look at each of the snapshots.
> What TMPGEnc does is take each of those individual snapshots and stick
> them together into a movie. The images needed to do this are *not* in the
> clockdemo.pov file, but they 'should' be in the same folder though and be
> numbered 1 through 20.
>
> If they are not there, then try looking in a couple of other places. The
> first place to look, if you are running it using the command line thing
> 'inside' POVRay is in the directory POVRay itself runs from. It is
> possible, since you are not using the normal method of running it, that
> it could be placing them there instead, but I doubt it. If you are
> running it from a DOS window, try looking in the same place as you ran it
> from in there. If you still can't find it, then look in povray.ini for
> the line:
>
> Output_File_Name= ...
>
> If this line exists, then it should only contain a directory. All images
> you create with POVRay will be created in 'that' folder. Normally this
> line is empty or blocked out so it doesn't do anything. I don't remember
> which. In any case, someplace, somewhere you have a set of files called
> clockdemo1.bmp through clockdemo20.bmp or something similar. If all else
> fails, open a DOS window and type "dir clockdemo*.* /s/p". If the files
> are anywhere on you hard drive, it will find them. TMPGEnc needs the
> 'first' one of those files, **not** the .pov file.
>
>
> --
> void main () {

>     call functional_code()
>   else
>     call crash_windows();
> }
OK, I think I spotted the problem. I couldn't understand you. I assumed the
version of POV-ray I'm using rendered all the pics in one file:
clockdemo.pov. Instead, my program rendered each picture and automatically
stored them in a separate FOLDER somewhere else. I found them in the
POVimages folder (clockdemo, clockdemo00, clockdemo01, etc.). Now what? Oh,
BTW, there are many other images in that folder besides those from the
clockdemo. Should I seclude them into a separate folder?

Post a reply to this message

CFM nous apporta ses lumieres ainsi en ce 2004/05/22 17:24... :

> <snip>
>
> Oh,
>BTW, there are many other images in that folder besides those from the
>clockdemo. Should I seclude them into a separate folder?
>
>  
>
You don't need to. Some of those may be used by some sample cenes, and 
need to stay where POV Ray expect them to be. You can move them 
somewhere else, but be prepared to move them back if some renders return 
an error. Check presisely what the error say.

Alain

Post a reply to this message

In article <web.40afc50027c58a6ad5551b880@news.povray.org>, nomail@nomail 
says...
> OK, I think I spotted the problem. I couldn't understand you. I assumed the
> version of POV-ray I'm using rendered all the pics in one file:
> clockdemo.pov. Instead, my program rendered each picture and automatically
> stored them in a separate FOLDER somewhere else. I found them in the
> POVimages folder (clockdemo, clockdemo00, clockdemo01, etc.). Now what? Oh,
> BTW, there are many other images in that folder besides those from the
> clockdemo. Should I seclude them into a separate folder?
> 
> 

Yes. POV-Ray can't place anything into a single file. There is no version 
that I know of that can or does do so. It is intended only to generate 
each separate 'frame', requiring you to connect them all together in a 
movie.

Don't worry about secluding the images. You could copy them all into a 
separate folder if you want, but it isn't necessary. The one merely 
called 'clockdemo.bmp' may be a problem though. In general if the image 
doesn't have a number, then it is a 'still' image, not part of an 
animation. What likely happened is that you ran clockdemo.pov without 
animation turn on, so POV-Ray generated a single still image from it. 
This image is "identical" to clockdemo00. This will be a problem when you 
run TMPGEnc, since that program looks for 'all' files that start with a 
name + numbers. The result will be:

clockdemo.bmp
clockdemo00.bmp
clockdemo01.bmp
...

In other words, it will incorrectly believe that the one without any 
number is the 'first' frame in the animation, even though it is actually 
a duplicate of clockdemo00.bmp. So, unless you move all the rest of them 
into a separate folder, you will need to delete the one that only shows 
'clockdemo', with no numbers.

Now, when TMPGEnc loads and you pick a movie type is will ask you:

Video File:                    [Browse...] <- click this button
Audio File:                    [Browse...]

Select 'clockdemo00.bmp' from the folder with all the images in it. 
TMPGEnc will automatically shorten it to 'clockdemo.bmp', so when it is 
making the movie, it will first look for 'clockdemo.bmp, then 
'clockdemo00.bmp' and so on, until it runs out of files with that name. 
Basically it is asking you for either a) an existing movie file to import 
or b) the first 'frame' of a series of numbered images to make into one, 
which is what you are trying to do. ;) Don't bother with the audio 
option, it will automatically set that to the same file(s), unless you 
specifically need to use one. Click "next" until you get to a page that 
asks for the "Output File:". The other pages have a bunch of setting that 
only an expert will likely know how to manage. At this point you can 
change where it will place the file or the name it is going to use, just 
make sure it has the right extension (.mpg for normal movies or .m2v + 
.wav) for DVD).

By default it will put the finished movie in the same place as the images 
used to make it, so you can probably leave this alone to and just click 
the "OK" button. It will them tell you that 'clockdemo.mpg does not 
exist' (or something similar) and ask you if it should create it. Click 
OK. It should then pop to a screen that will show frames being loaded and 
put into the file. This screen will also show the Input, Audio and Output 
files it is using. Just sit back and watch it build the file. Once the it 
shows 100%, your movie is finished. ;)

You can also use the Setting button and other options on this page to 
fiddle with how the movie is made, but all this stuff is automatically 
set by the wizard, which is generally good enough, unless you know what 
you are doing. In any case, now all you need to do is open up the new 
clockdemo.mpg file in your favorite player and watch the animation. ;) Is 
is going to be short though, it takes a lot more images to make something 
that runs for any length of time. The pentmap.pov demo (assuming they 
didn't rename it. My own copy of clockdemo is called clockd, so they may 
have renamed some of the files) has 300 images in is and is only 1 minute 
in length. The clockdemo will be 0.4 seconds in length. lol

Clockdemo is only intended to give a basic example of how animation 
works, not a full length animation. In fact, the longest animation of any 
of them is Life.pov at 1 minute, 40 seconds. The rest are on average only 
about 12 seconds in length.

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

Post a reply to this message

In article <web.40afc50027c58a6ad5551b880@news.povray.org> , "CFM" 
<nomail@nomail> wrote:

> OK, I think I spotted the problem. I couldn't understand you. I assumed the
> version of POV-ray I'm using rendered all the pics in one file:
> clockdemo.pov. Instead, my program rendered each picture and automatically
> stored them in a separate FOLDER somewhere else.

Well, that implies you didn't pay attention to the installer when it asked
you if you want your files stored there.  Of course, the documentation also
tells you where the files go.  It would be a really good idea to read it!
POV-Ray doesn't include over 800 letter-size pages of documentation for
decorative purposes only ;-)

    Thorsten

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In article <40b0e28c@news.povray.org>, tho### [at] trfde says...
> In article <web.40afc50027c58a6ad5551b880@news.povray.org> , "CFM" 
> <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> 
> > OK, I think I spotted the problem. I couldn't understand you. I assumed the
> > version of POV-ray I'm using rendered all the pics in one file:
> > clockdemo.pov. Instead, my program rendered each picture and automatically
> > stored them in a separate FOLDER somewhere else.
> 
> Well, that implies you didn't pay attention to the installer when it asked
> you if you want your files stored there.  Of course, the documentation also
> tells you where the files go.  It would be a really good idea to read it!
> POV-Ray doesn't include over 800 letter-size pages of documentation for
> decorative purposes only ;-)
> 
>     Thorsten
> 

Bit of a thought on this.. Has anyone ever considered providing a 
separate 'Animation_File=' option, so you can redirect frames of 
animations to a specific place? Like I pointed out to CFM, if you first 
run the animation without animation options, it will produce a clock=0 
image, so when most programs are asked to generate a movie from them it 
incorrectly duplicates the first frame. Having frames from animation be 
optionally placed in a separate location, when animation is turned on, 
would make things simpler. Especially since you could easily delete the 
contents of that directory when finished with them, without worrying 
about deleting all your other images along with the animation frames. It 
imho doesn't make a lot of sense for them to end up in the same place as 
still images.

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

Post a reply to this message

> Yes. POV-Ray can't place anything into a single file. There is no version
> that I know of that can or does do so. It is intended only to generate
> each separate 'frame', requiring you to connect them all together in a
> movie.
>
> Don't worry about secluding the images. You could copy them all into a
> separate folder if you want, but it isn't necessary. The one merely
> called 'clockdemo.bmp' may be a problem though. In general if the image
> doesn't have a number, then it is a 'still' image, not part of an
> animation. What likely happened is that you ran clockdemo.pov without
> animation turn on, so POV-Ray generated a single still image from it.
> This image is "identical" to clockdemo00. This will be a problem when you
> run TMPGEnc, since that program looks for 'all' files that start with a
> name + numbers. The result will be:
>
> clockdemo.bmp
> clockdemo00.bmp
> clockdemo01.bmp
> ...
>
> In other words, it will incorrectly believe that the one without any
> number is the 'first' frame in the animation, even though it is actually
> a duplicate of clockdemo00.bmp. So, unless you move all the rest of them
> into a separate folder, you will need to delete the one that only shows
> 'clockdemo', with no numbers.
>
> Now, when TMPGEnc loads and you pick a movie type is will ask you:
>
> Video File:                    [Browse...] <- click this button
> Audio File:                    [Browse...]
>
> Select 'clockdemo00.bmp' from the folder with all the images in it.
> TMPGEnc will automatically shorten it to 'clockdemo.bmp', so when it is
> making the movie, it will first look for 'clockdemo.bmp, then
> 'clockdemo00.bmp' and so on, until it runs out of files with that name.
> Basically it is asking you for either a) an existing movie file to import
> or b) the first 'frame' of a series of numbered images to make into one,
> which is what you are trying to do. ;) Don't bother with the audio
> option, it will automatically set that to the same file(s), unless you
> specifically need to use one. Click "next" until you get to a page that
> asks for the "Output File:". The other pages have a bunch of setting that
> only an expert will likely know how to manage. At this point you can
> change where it will place the file or the name it is going to use, just
> make sure it has the right extension (.mpg for normal movies or .m2v +
> .wav) for DVD).
>
> By default it will put the finished movie in the same place as the images
> used to make it, so you can probably leave this alone to and just click
> the "OK" button. It will them tell you that 'clockdemo.mpg does not
> exist' (or something similar) and ask you if it should create it. Click
> OK. It should then pop to a screen that will show frames being loaded and
> put into the file. This screen will also show the Input, Audio and Output
> files it is using. Just sit back and watch it build the file. Once the it
> shows 100%, your movie is finished. ;)
>
> You can also use the Setting button and other options on this page to
> fiddle with how the movie is made, but all this stuff is automatically
> set by the wizard, which is generally good enough, unless you know what
> you are doing. In any case, now all you need to do is open up the new
> clockdemo.mpg file in your favorite player and watch the animation. ;) Is
> is going to be short though, it takes a lot more images to make something
> that runs for any length of time. The pentmap.pov demo (assuming they
> didn't rename it. My own copy of clockdemo is called clockd, so they may
> have renamed some of the files) has 300 images in is and is only 1 minute
> in length. The clockdemo will be 0.4 seconds in length. lol
>
> Clockdemo is only intended to give a basic example of how animation
> works, not a full length animation. In fact, the longest animation of any
> of them is Life.pov at 1 minute, 40 seconds. The rest are on average only
> about 12 seconds in length.
>
> --
> void main () {

>     call functional_code()
>   else
>     call crash_windows();
> }
Well, I went to the TMPGEnc file, and went to the Select Source File window,
clicked the browse button next to the Video File box, and entered
clockdemo00 into the open box. I clicked Open, but got an error window
saying, "Invalid Video Source." What did I miss?

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