POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.general : Animation feature request. : Re: Animation feature request. Server Time
22 Mar 2026 03:50:30 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Animation feature request.  
From: Bald Eagle
Date: 21 Mar 2026 09:30:00
Message: <web.69be9c7bf7a277641f9dae3025979125@news.povray.org>
"m@b" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> (In response to "Post something", Bald Eagle)

Thanks - that's one facet of this thread - so often we're independently trying
to work something out by ourselves (which is admirable), but the solution might
elude us for some time and thwart the completion of a project.

> I wish we had access to Subset_Start_Frame and Subset_End_Frame from within the
> SDL.
>
> We already have access to initial_frame, final_frame, frame_number, etc.
>
> I have a inc file that reports (via #debug) animation average frame time,
> estimated completion time, etc. It doesn't work if I am only rendering a subset
> of an animation.

Yes, that would be helpful.
I don't often use animation or ini files (that's more of a jr thing)
but I'm wondering if you can do something similar to what's done with screen.inc
where the user defines the camera position and look_at vectors as SDL-visible
identifiers, and then proceeds to use them from there.

I recall that you can set identifier values from an ini file, so perhaps you can
pass the information in to the main scene file that way.

3.2.5.1 Constant
Declare=IDENTIFIER=FLOAT Declares an identifier with a float value
You can now declare a constant in an INI file, and that constant will be
available to the scene. Since INI file statements may also be laced on the
command-line, you can therefore also declare on the command-line (though there
is no switch for it).

  Declare=MyValue=24
This would be the same as a #declare MyValue=24; in a scene file. The value on
the right-hand side must be a constant float value.

A possible use could be switching off radiosity or photons from command-line:

--in INI-file / on command-line

Declare=RAD=0

--in scenefile

global_settings {
  #if (RAD)
    radiosity {
    ...
    }
#end
}

So, in your ini file you do something like Subset_Start_Frame=30
but I'm wondering if you can then do something like
Declare=SSF=Subset_Start_Frame.
If not, you could just set Declare=SSF=30 and then do Subset_Start_Frame=SSF
(if that works)


- BE


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