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Coloring Molecules and Objects

   

VMD maintains a database of the colors used for the molecules and other graphical objects which are visible in the display window. It keeps track of

    There are 98 colors available in VMD, with color ids ranging from 0 to 97. Of these, 34 are named. The first 17 (with values 0 to 16) are, in order: blue, red, gray, orange, yellow, tan, silver, green, white, pink, cyan, purple, lime, mauve, ochre, iceblue, and black. The next 17 (with color indices from 17 to 33) are translucent (partially transparent) versions of the same terms. The names for these are the same as the solid color, prefixed with the word ``trans_''. For example, the translucent version of ``yellow'' is ``trans_yellow''.    

The next group of 32 colors (from 34 to 65) are solid colors used in the color map, followed by the 32 colors (65 to 97) which make up the translucent forms of the solid colors. These can be set to one of several ranges with the Color form or the color text command:       red green blue, red white blue, or black white, etc. There are no names for the specific colors. The color map will be discussed in more detail in a section to follow.

Each color has six properties which consist of floating point values. Some describe the color, others the transparency, and still others how the color interacts with the surrounding light. For the most part, you will not need to alter the values given to these parameters by default. Alterations will usually only arise when you want to tweak values to output rendering files used by VRML and POV readers. Another application of changing the default color settings might be defining your own color palette or making black-and-white pictures.   The six options are:

For details regarding these material properties, consult an elementary graphics book such as Foley & Van Dam (Computer Graphics).




next up previous contents index
Next: Color categories Up: No Title Previous: Off

Justin Gullingsrud
Tue Apr 6 09:22:39 CDT 1999