VMD command for rendering images with POV-Ray with a transparent background

povray-render.vmd

# this command makes a POV-Ray 3 script and then renders it with povray, with the following settings:
# use the same aspect ratio as the screen (+W%w and +H%h)
# write targa file (+FT) with filename + ".tga" (-O%s.tga)
# make background transparent (+UA)
# use anti-aliasing (+A)
# make it so that you can kill povray during rendering (+X)
render POV3 vmdscene.pov povray +W%w +H%h -I%s -O%s.tga +X +A +FT +UA

# this is a nice command, but it's tedious to come here and copy it each time
# to get around this, i've written a tcl procedure that does this, and 
# copied it into my vmdrc so that it's always available for me

proc povtrans {fn} {
  render POV3 $fn povray +W%w +H%h -I%s -O%s.tga +X +A +FT +UA
  
  # now open the rendered image
  exec /usr/bin/open $fn.tga
}