From: Tyler Luchko (tluchko_at_gpu.srv.ualberta.ca)
Date: Fri Dec 12 2003 - 12:24:06 CST

On Fri, 12 Dec 2003, John Stone wrote:

>
> Dear Tyler,
> Drawing individual triangles with Tcl will be many times slower than
> the built-in MSMS interface because they will be rendered one at a time
> independently of each other, with no connectivity information. As such,
> they cannot be automatically optimized by ACTC. Internally, VMD does
> have the means to draw aribtrary RGB colors for triangles, the color scale
> used by VMD is meant to be a convenience for the Tcl interface.
>

Would it be possible to add a graphics color command that takes an
aribtrary RGB value in a future version? Personally, I would find this
quite useful.

> What sort of surfaces are you generating that you can't create
> using the built-in MSMS interface in VMD? What parameters are you
> passing MSMS in your scripted version?

In this case I've been painting the surface based on the electrostatic
potential at the surface of the protein. I was hoping to keep this open
as a general method as well. I.e. I could use any value that I calculate
at the surface to paint the surface with in VMD.

Thanks,

Tyler

>
> Thanks,
> John Stone
> vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 11, 2003 at 03:37:33PM -0700, Tyler Luchko wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I've been trying to visualize surface properties that VMD does not
> > natively suport by calling MSMS myself and drawing the triangles in VMD
> > using TCL with my own colouring for the faces. The problem is that
> > this is _extremely_ slow. It is slow to draw, slow to rotate and
> > surprisingly slow to delete the faces. I've noticed that VMD uses ACTC
> > Triangle Consolidation for drawing the MSMS surfaces and I was wondering
> > if it is possible to use this from TCL as I assume that it would make
> > things faster.
> >
> > Also, I was wondering, what are the chances that VMD will allow colouring
> > with an arbitrary RGB triplet in the future? This would be much
> > preferrable to using the 1040 colour pallet.
> >
> > Thank you,
> >
> > Tyler
> >
> > ________TyLer_LuchKo__::__MaSters_StuDent__->>__DePartMent_Of_PhysIcs_________
> > _______UnIVerSiTy_Of_AlBerTa__->>__EdMonTon__->>__AlBerTa__->>__CanADa________
> > ____http://Phys.UAlBerTa.Ca/______________________tluchko@Phys.UAlBerTa.Ca____
> > _______________________780-492-5519__(But_SomeTimes_3552)_____________________
>
> --
> NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
> Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
> University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
> Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu Phone: 217-244-3349
> WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/ Fax: 217-244-6078
>