[Chimera-users] scens/movies rendered with povray

[Greg Couch]

On Mon, 3 Mar 2008, Klaas Decanniere wrote:

> Hello,
>
> The option to make movies using povray works nice and easy, so I want to
> push the boundaries a bit :-)
>
> - the standard texture included in the .pov files has a very simple
> finish - is there an easy way to include a spiced-up version?
> - when not using a "wait" command, several movements (roll, move, scale)
> are combined. When using the wait command, movements become separated
> with a small "hesitation" before the second movement starts. Is there a
> way to minimize this hesitation?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Klaas
>
> P.S.: if you know why powerpoint would play a movie fine 3 or 4 times in
> a row and then fail after that (nothing else changes, except maybe
> time), please let me know.

Hello,

We don't have a simple way to change the POV-ray finish.  What you could 
do today, is to use chimera's x3dsave command to export your scene as a 
X3D file, next run CHIMERA/bin/x3d2pov to convert it to a .pov file, and 
then edit the result.  If the editting is done by a program, you could 
invoke it and x3d2pov with chimera's system command, so all of the 
commands could be in a command script.  FYI, I will be deprecating the 
x3dsave command with a more general export command that will let you 
export directly to .pov before for the next production release.

As for PowerPoint, we have a list of troubleshooting web links in the 
Chimera documentation on "Making Movies".  If you have already done what 
they recommend and it didn't help, we like to know.

 	Greg Couch
 	UCSF Computer Graphics Lab