Hi Klaas, Movie recording overrides the "wait for POV-Ray" and "keep POV-Ray input files" options, as mentioned here: http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/preferences.html#POV-Ray%20O... Our thinking was probably to prevent users from accidentally filling their disks with an avalanche of the very large *.pov files. However, obviously this prevents you from doing what you want. I can't think of any current "user interface" way to specify saving the files or not actually rendering them during movie recording (although we should probably discuss them as possible developments). I am hoping one of the programmers can suggest how to modify the Chimera Python code to do those things. If you are using the MD Movie tool, its per-frame script option can be used to export a file at each trajectory frame (more detail below). However, if there is not a 1-to-1 relationship between MD Movie trajectory frames and the frames you want in your movie, or if you are using Movie Recorder or the movie command (not MD Movie), I believe that modifying your copy of Chimera would be the more practical option. What you would put in a MD Movie per-frame script: The most recent versions of Chimera include an "export" command with a POV-Ray option (try the command "export list" just to see if your version has it, if not, get a newer daily build): http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/midas/export.html Older versions have a similar command "x3dsave" but it only saves the X3D format, which could subsequently be converted to povray files with "x3d2pov" - the latter program is included with Chimera, as mentioned here: http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/export.html Best, Elaine ----- Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D. meng@cgl.ucsf.edu UCSF Computer Graphics Lab and Babbitt Lab Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry University of California, San Francisco http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/meng/index.html On Mar 15, 2008, at 8:01 AM, Klaas Decanniere wrote:

For at least some versions of Chimera, the "keep pov-ray input files" option in the Favorites - Preferences- Pov-ray tab does not work ( .pov files are deleted after rendering during animation)

This is true e.g for build 2491 2008/02/11 (Platform: linux2 windowing system x11).

Is there a way to force this option? I would like to do some post processing on the .pov files before rendering. An option to generate an animation series .pov files without doing the actual rendering would be even better - how can I do that?

Thanks for the help and kind regards,

Klaas Decanniere

We're thinking of adding some generic per-frame hook as a command so that you don't have to use Movie Recorder at all to generate a series of POVray files that you want to post-process before rendering (you would use the not-yet-documented "export" command to generate them). --Eric On Mar 17, 2008, at 11:00 AM, Thomas Goddard wrote:

Hi Klaas,

You can make the Chimera movie recorder use your preference for keeping POVray files by editing file

chimera/share/MovieRecorder/RecorderHandler.py

changing line 120 from

raytraceKeepInput = False,

to

# raytraceKeepInput = False,

Then restart Chimera.

Perhaps we should change the Chimera default for the "keep POVray input files" to false and have movie recorder respect the preference setting.

Tom _______________________________________________ Chimera-users mailing list Chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/mailman/listinfo/chimera-users