VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Tue Oct 03 2017 - 13:58:52 CDT

Hi,
  Sorry I'm late responding to this, I'm out fighting a nasty flu virus
and so my inbox is overflowing...

There are a number of ways of getting high resolution output.

As some had already mentioned, if you're running VMD interactively on
Linux, recent Linux distros have window managers that prevent the graphics
window from being resized larger than the display. This is a probem for
interactive rendering of snapshots.

That being said, you can overcome this in a couple of different ways
for non-interactive rendering with TachyonL-OptiX, without having to
do anything external, just by using a few environment variables and/or
special settings:

1) First scheme:
  set env(VMDOPTIXIMAGESIZE) "3840 2160"
  render TachyonLOptiXInternal vmdscene.ppm

2) Second scheme:
  display update off
  display resize 3840 2160
  render TachyonLOptiXInternal vmdscene.ppm

Both of these are annoying ways of getting around the limitations here,
but there's ongoing work in VMD to refactor the VMD rendering features to
make it MUCH easier to produce arbitrary resolution images not associated
with the display window size, which has become a bit of a problematic
constraint in modern times.

Let me know if those work for you. I would expect them to work
equally well for making movies etc too.

Best regards,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Tue, Oct 03, 2017 at 01:19:56PM +1100, Dallas Warren wrote:
> Giacomo,
>
> Need to use for the 360 animations to get the correct projection, plus
> it does the 3D in one step.
>
> Plus, rendered using Tachon per frame ~ 30 sec, using Tachyon-Optix
> ~0.5 sec per frame.
>
> The following link will take you to an animation that shows what comes
> straight out of using Tachyon-Optix (with omniprojection and 3D turned
> on) along with the Movie Generator. Though I do combine the frames
> together using ffmpeg myself to get it into mp4 format, where can get
> much better compression etc than the default with the Movie Generator.
>
> https://twitter.com/dr_dbw/status/913273804066979840
> Catch ya,
>
> Dr. Dallas Warren
> Drug Delivery, Disposition and Dynamics
> Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University
> 381 Royal Parade, Parkville VIC 3052
> dallas.warren_at_monash.edu
> ---------------------------------
> When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail.
>
>
> On 3 October 2017 at 10:06, Giacomo Fiorin <giacomo.fiorin_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi Dallas, I think those recommendations apply to offline rendering with
> > Tachyon, where you can use the -res option.
> >
> > John Stone may be able to confirm whether it's possible to run the OptiX
> > renderer in the same way, if you are set on using it.
> >
> > But overall I find it much more efficient to playing with the various
> > advanced options (e.g. skylight) that the offline Tachyon has at low
> > resolution, and then crank it up when you are done.
> >
> > Giacomo
> >
> > On Mon, Oct 2, 2017 at 5:47 PM, Dallas Warren <dallas.warren_at_monash.edu>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> Thanks for the hint Joshua.
> >>
> >> However, just tried that and the display window will not get any
> >> larger than the maximum window size (1912x1015).
> >>
> >> Obviously, there must be some manner to do this, since
> >> http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/minitutorials/vrmovies/ states:
> >>
> >> "For early testing purposes, the movie can be rendered at low or
> >> moderate resolutions, e.g. 512x512, 1024x1024, or 2048x2048, which
> >> will both speed up rendering and also speed up YouTube uploading and
> >> associated post-processing. Final completed movies should be rendered
> >> at either 3840x2160 or 4096x4096 resolution, to ensure good quality
> >> playback on the latest generation smartphones that have 2560x1440
> >> displays. "
> >> Catch ya,
> >>
> >> Dr. Dallas Warren
> >> Drug Delivery, Disposition and Dynamics
> >> Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University
> >> 381 Royal Parade, Parkville VIC 3052
> >> dallas.warren_at_monash.edu
> >> ---------------------------------
> >> When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a
> >> nail.
> >>
> >>
> >> On 3 October 2017 at 04:22, Vermaas, Joshua <Joshua.Vermaas_at_nrel.gov>
> >> wrote:
> >> > No, sadly. On linux boxes, I tend to just increase the resolution of the
> >> > display window. On my machine, I can get sizes in excess of the monitor
> >> > resolution by having the window hanging off the edge of the screen *before*
> >> > the "display resize" command.
> >> >
> >> > -Josh
> >> >
> >> > On 10/01/2017 07:05 AM, Dallas Warren wrote:
> >> > Think I've worked it out, but can't try it out until at my workstation
> >> > in a couple of days. Generate the frames using Tachyon and can I then feed
> >> > the .dat file to TachyonL-OptiX in some manner?
> >> >
> >> > On 28 Sep. 2017 2:52 pm, "Dallas Warren"
> >> > <dallas.warren_at_monash.edu<mailto:dallas.warren_at_monash.edu>> wrote:
> >> > Got myself a decent graphics card now, yay! (History here:
> >> >
> >> > http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/mailing_list/vmd-l/28862.html08d508cd248c%7Ca0f29d7e28cd4f5484427885aee7c080%7C0%7C0%7C636424599534295726&sdata=EwW3k6h8bR1%2FGJjQU5VwsycImAcafXevnUsKmytjuOo%3D&reserved=0>)
> >> >
> >> > So now having a go at generating a 360 3D animation. Following
> >> > instructions at
> >> >
> >> > http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/minitutorials/vrmovies/%7Ca0f29d7e28cd4f5484427885aee7c080%7C0%7C0%7C636424599534295726&sdata=FxEPWg8sxhjOASPoq8dH7dfsw99XtwFNx%2BAKIyNgX4c%3D&reserved=0>
> >> > I can make
> >> > one. Looks neat. However, it renders it at the resolution of the
> >> > display window, how do I get it to a higher resolution? I must be
> >> > missing something simple here ....
> >> >
> >> > With previous 3D animations I would render using Tachyon with the
> >> > Movie Generator, render both left and right stereo views separately,
> >> > then run Tachyon on the command line with the .dat files to get higher
> >> > resolution images, join into videos with the left/right views joined
> >> > together. Worked well.
> >> >
> >> > Since using Tachyon-Optix as the renderer, it doesn't output the .dat
> >> > file that Tachyon does, just the stereo 360 images that then stitch
> >> > together into the video.
> >> >
> >> > Start up message for reference:
> >> > Info) Multithreading available, 12 CPUs detected.
> >> > Info) CPU features: SSE2 AVX
> >> > Info) Free system memory: 33GB (92%)
> >> > Info) Creating CUDA device pool and initializing hardware...
> >> > Info) Detected 1 available CUDA accelerator:
> >> > Info) [0] GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 28 SM_6.1 @ 1.66 GHz, 11GB RAM, KTO, AE2,
> >> > ZCP
> >> > Warning) Detected X11 'Composite' extension: if incorrect display occurs
> >> > Warning) try disabling this X server option. Most OpenGL drivers
> >> > Warning) disable stereoscopic display when 'Composite' is enabled.
> >> > Info) OpenGL renderer: GeForce GTX 1080 Ti/PCIe/SSE2
> >> > Info) Features: STENCIL MSAA(4) MDE CVA MTX NPOT PP PS GLSL(OVFGS)
> >> > Info) Full GLSL rendering mode is available.
> >> > Info) Textures: 2-D (32768x32768), 3-D (16384x16384x16384),
> >> > Multitexture (4)
> >> > Info) Detected 1 available TachyonL/OptiX ray tracing accelerator
> >> > Info) Compiling 1 OptiX shaders on 1 target GPU...
> >> > Info) Dynamically loaded 2 plugins in directory:
> >> > Info) /usr/local/lib/vmd/plugins/LINUXAMD64/molfile
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > Catch ya,
> >> >
> >> > Dr. Dallas Warren
> >> > Drug Delivery, Disposition and Dynamics
> >> > Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University
> >> > 381 Royal Parade, Parkville VIC 3052
> >> > dallas.warren_at_monash.edu<mailto:dallas.warren_at_monash.edu>
> >> > ---------------------------------
> >> > When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble
> >> > a nail.
> >> >
> >> >
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Giacomo Fiorin
> > Associate Professor of Research, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
> > Contractor, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD
> > http://goo.gl/Q3TBQU
> > https://github.com/giacomofiorin 

-- 
NIH Center for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/           Phone: 217-244-3349
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/