filerenderscenepovray

Render multiple files in POV-Ray (Windows)


I know this has been asked before, but none of the answers really helped me. So my problem is this: I have a bunch of .pov files named, XXXXX000001...., and I want to render them, but the queue thing inside of POV-Ray only lets you render 500 at a time. So, is there a way to render them all automatically? I know the answer is to write a script of some kind, but I don't know a lot about it so if you could give me a step by step instructions I would be grateful.


Solution

  • Create a POV-Ray .ini file SimpleAnimation.ini using notepad, and in that file specify the number of .pov files as Initial_Frame/Final_Frame. This .ini file is the file you Open and Run to render all the frames. You can also use Subset_Start_Frame/Subset_End_Frame with duplicate .ini files when rendering subsets over multiple machines:

    Input_File_Name="SimpleAnimation.pov"
    Width=800
    Height=600
    Antialias=On
    Antialias_Threshold=0.05
    Output_File_Type=N
    
    Initial_Frame=1
    Final_Frame=124
    
    # Change these values to render a subset of the frames #
    Subset_Start_Frame=1
    Subset_End_Frame=124
    

    Your SimpleAnimation.pov file will then be loaded once per frame and in that .pov file you just load the relevant frame file you want using the POV-Ray variable frame_number:

    #if(frame_number=1)
    #include "SimpleAnimation000001.pov"
    #end
    #if(frame_number=2)
    #include "SimpleAnimation000002.pov"
    #end
    #if(frame_number=3)
    #include "SimpleAnimation000003.pov"
    #end
    

    The rendered images will be generated with names according to the Input_File_Name in the SimpleAnimation.ini file with leading zeros according to the number of digits in Final_Frame, e.g. for 124 frames you get:

    SimpleAnimation001.png
    SimpleAnimation002.png
    ...
    SimpleAnimation124.png