From: dstrahs_at_pace.edu
Date: Mon May 14 2007 - 17:52:17 CDT

Hi John:

Perhaps it would be simplest, and ensure backwards compatibility, by
providing a button to establish a new directory for output. Zipping can be left
to the user; plenty of other utilities for that. Or you can provide a configuration
option to use external compression tools for the files, if a button is checked.
By default, the button should be left unchecked.

Just some thoughts... makes your life a little more interesting?

Dan Strahs

----- Original Message -----
From: John Stone <johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu>
Date: Monday, May 14, 2007 3:52 pm
Subject: Re: vmd-l: An remark on PoV output
To: Szymon Zietkiewicz <szymon_at_biotech.ug.gda.pl>
Cc: vmd-l_at_ks.uiuc.edu

> Hi,
> I've been contemplating redesigning the rendering
> interface in VMD
> to export scenes as a collection of files either in a
> subdirectory of
> some kind, a .zip file, or something along those lines.
> This would
> make it much easier to emit multiple scene components, logically
> separatingmaterials, shaders, scene geometry, and camera/viewing
> parameters and
> making it easier to do the types of things you mention in your email.
> Doing this will only be practical if I plan to break backwards
> compatibilitywith older versions of VMD, so I don't plan to do
> it until we're ready
> to make significant changes in the export/rendering system
> beyond just
> the file structure. If I can come up with a reasonable way
> of doing this
> in an evoluationary process, I'll pursue it, it's just a lot of
> code to
> change and I'd rather not have to maintain both new and old versions
> of this system. I'll see what I can do to accomodate this
> as I plan
> the changes to the rendering system that are already in the workds.
>
> Cheers,
> John Stone
> vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
>
> On Sat, May 12, 2007 at 01:45:01PM +0200, Szymon Zietkiewicz wrote:
> > Dear VMD Developers and Users,
> >
> > I use VMD for both protein visualization and generation of PoV
> files for
> > further use. Recently I have to render a series of large
> pictures of
> > proteins for an "festival of science" - so they have to be
> aesthetically
> > pleasing rather than very "scientific". Doing so I have found
> that the
> > .pov files generated by VMD, although producing very nice
> results, are
> > very hard for subsequent reworking in PoVRay. To faciliate my
> work I have
> > to separate the protein structure definition from the rest of
> scene
> > description by moving the most of .pov file to .inc file
> (makes life
> > easier when adding additional lights, backgrounds ect, without
> the need
> > to parse and render protein itself). Then, I have to manually
> > find/replace each rgbt definition for particular
> representations in
> > created .inc file with appropriate variable declared at the
> top so that I
> > would be able to adjust colors without creating a new .pov
> file from VMD.
> > I wonder, where it would be possible for next versions of VMD
> to do this
> > operations for me, by generating separate .pov file with
> camera, lights
> > etc., and .inc file with protein itself (favourably with
> each graphical
> > representation individually), with the colors, where possible,
> declared
> > as variables.
> > Similar thing is done in pov output of DeepView, although I
> prefer work
> > with VMD even at the cost of doing all the above mentioned
> operations by
> > myself
> > :-)
> >
> > thanks,
> >
> > Szymon
>
> --
> 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
>