Running console commands to convert with ImageMagick from within Unity 3d

Question

Folks!

So, I'm attempting to convert a PDF to a .png, as the title implies. I'm using the software package ImageMagick. I want to use this package to convert pdfs to pngs on-the-fly from a Unity 3d project -- so that the application can display the PDFs as .png textures in-game when it needs, but still preserves them as PDFs for smaller file sizes. I'm not quite sure what I've done wrong, here -- but when I run it in Unity, all I get is an open cmd prompt without my command in it. Is there something obvious that I'm missing, here? Here's the code:

using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; using System.IO; using System.Reflection; using System.Security.Policy; public class CommandLineTest : MonoBehaviour { // Use this for initialization void Start () { string convertedDirName = "ConvertedPDFs"; string currDir = System.Environment.CurrentDirectory; System.IO.Directory.CreateDirectory(currDir + @"\" + convertedDirName); string strCmdText; strCmdText= @"/c " + currDir + @"\ImageMagick\convert.exe " + currDir + @"\PDFs\Appointment.pdf " + currDir + @"\" + convertedDirName + @"\" + "Appointment.png"; System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("CMD.exe",strCmdText); //ImageMagick print(strCmdText); } }

When the print statement at the end runs, it prints the following string: c/ convert /c F:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\ImageMagickTest\ImageMagick\convert.exe F:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\ImageMagickTest\PDFs\Appointment.pdf F:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\ImageMagickTest\ConvertedPDFs\Appointment.png

Does anything appear obviously wrong, to you? I should mention that ImageMagick's convert application is not actually "installed" on my system -- I'm just using the "portable" version and have thrown it in my project folder. So I was hoping that the "convert" command line would still work. Does this mean that I can't access it with a dos prompt? If I can't, then how do I pass an image to the "convert" program in imagemagick using, provided I know that it's going to be in my project's folder?

EDIT: Some people have suggested that I access convert.exe instead of cmd.exe, and to attempt to just feed the image paths to it that way. So here is the second way I'm trying it:

strCmdText= currDir + @"\PDFs\Appointment.pdf" + " " + currDir + @"\" + convertedDirName + @"\" + "Appointment.png"; System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(currDir + @"\ImageMagick\convert.exe",strCmdText);

You might be missing quotes ' around your paths since they appear to have one or more spaces in them. — SuperOli
– SuperOli, Commented Nov 8, 2012 at 13:58
Hey Oli, I appreciate the thought, but I think the quotation situation is alright...if there was something wrong, wouldn't the print statement show that? Cheerio. — Catlard
– Catlard, Commented Nov 8, 2012 at 14:10

jmh · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-08 20:28:39Z

1

Try using some other commands (like dir) to figure out where you are in the filesystem and what is going wrong.

Also remember that if you are using the portable version and it is not in your path, you will have to execute it from the same directory as it is in.

edited Nov 8, 2012 at 20:28

answered Nov 8, 2012 at 13:31

jmh

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5 Comments

Catlard Over a year ago

You are absolutely correct -- it should be /c, to tell DOS to run the command and then close the cmd window. I have added a path for the convert.exe application -- I'm not sure if it's right -- it's still not working. the dos prompt is definitely running and doing SOMETHING now, though. Quick question, though -- do you know of any example of calling imagemagick from the directory it's in? Do I need to use "convert.exe" and then give it the file name? If you're not familiar with ImageMagick syntax, no worries, but you can't answer a question I don't ask, right? :P

Joey Over a year ago

You don't need cmd at all, except for built-in commands like dir. It's not DOS either, by the way.

Catlard Over a year ago

Thanks for pointing me in a better direction! Hmm...I don't need cmd? So I just need to call convert.exe via its path in the first argument of the Process.Start( call, and then just tell it to "convert image1.pdf image2.png" in the second argument? I'll try that now...

jmh Over a year ago

@Catlard Sounds like you are on the right track with that last comment. Imagemagick convert has a terribly complicated syntax that is explained in the documentation. Basically convert hello.pdf hello.png should do what you want though.

Catlard Over a year ago

Right. I appreciate that, and I think I'm closer -- actually, now I have started a similar problem -- something to do with the syntax again. [Care to take a look?] (stackoverflow.com/questions/13291537/…)

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