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String Substitution in Shell Commands

It could get cumbersome to change the Post_Scene_Command every time you changed scene names. POV-Ray can substitute various values into a command string for you. For example:

 Post_Scene_Command=tga2gif -d -m %s

POV-Ray will substitute the %s with the scene name in the command. The scene name is the Input_File_Name or +I setting with any drive, directory and extension removed. For example:

 Input_File_Name=c:\povray3\scenes\waycool.pov

is stripped down to the scene name waycool which results in...

 Post_Scene_Command=tga2gif -d -m waycool

In an animation it may be necessary to have the exact output file name with the frame number included. The string %o will substitute the output file name. Suppose you want to save your output files in a zip archive using the utility program pkzip. You could do...

 Post_Frame_Command=pkzip -m %s %o

After rendering frame 12 of myscene.pov POV-Ray would shell to the operating system with

 pkzip -m myscene mysce012.tga

The -M switch in pkzip moves mysce012.tga to myscene.zip and removes it from the directory. Note that %o includes frame numbers only when in an animation loop. During the Pre_Scene_Command and Post_Scene_Command there is no frame number so the original, unnumbered Output_File_Name is used. Any User_Abort_Command or Fatal_Error_Command not inside the loop will similarly give an unnumbered %o substitution.

Here is the complete list of substitutions available for a command string.

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