Rendering
Quick Output Using Snapshot
By now you are probably wondering how to produce a printout
of what you see on the screen. To do this, you will have to generate
a PostScript version of the display window. Presently, this is
a two step process involving both VMD and an external program
such as "display". The process begins with the render menu.
If you activate this form, you will see a browser listing of several
rendering options available from VMD. A few of these will be
discussed in more detail in the next section, but the one which interests
us at the moment is "snapshot." If you click on this option and hit "Go,"
VMD will use the SGI screen capture program "snapshot" to generate
an RGB rendering of the display window. By default this RGB rendering is
stored in a file called snap.rgb, but this can be changed in the
render menu if necessary. To convert snap.rgb to a printable
PostScript file, you should type "exec display snap.rgb" in the VMD console window.
This will launch the graphics program "display". The RGB
picture will pop up on the screen. In this picture, press down with
the rightmost mouse button to bring up "xv" controls. Click the
Save option and choose PostScript as the output format. You will
now have a printable file called snap.ps in your directory.
Another Example: Raster3D
VMD provides a number of other rendering alternatives for your
images. All options are listed in the render menu. One
of the most popular techniques is to use Raster3D. If you click
on this entry and hit the "Go" button, VMD will convert its data to
a form suitable for Raster3D and will then call this program to
process your image. Try it, but be patient. It takes Raster3D
time to do its calculations.