Introduction

This tutorial is designed to give users of VMD an introduction to advanced techniques for making custom images and movies. The tutorial assumes that you already have a working knowledge of VMD. For the accompanying VMD tutorials go to:
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Training/Tutorials/
This tutorial has been designed specifically for VMD 1.8.5, and should take about 3 hours to complete in its entirety.

The tutorial is subdivided into two separate units. In the first unit, we will look at the many options in VMD for the setup and production of images. The second unit is dedicated to trajectory use and the production of movies.

The Visualizing Molecules with VMD tutorial, available at http://www.scripps.edu
/rc/training/unixslides/vmd.pdf, covers graphical representations in more detail.

If you have any questions or comments on this tutorial, please email the TCB Tutorial mailing list at tutorial-l@ks.uiuc.edu. The mailing list is archived at http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Training/Tutorials/mailing_list/tutorial-l/.

Required programs

The following programs are required for this tutorial:

• VMD: Available at http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/ (for all platforms)

• POV-Ray: Available at http://www.povray.org/download/ (for all platforms)

• MSMS: Available at http://www.scripps.edu/pub/olson-web/people/
  sanner/html/msms_home.html

• VMDMovie: This plugin ships with VMD. However, please see
  http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/plugins/vmdmovie/ for platform-specific information regarding MPEG generation.

Getting Started

You can find the files for this tutorial in the imgmvtut-files directory. Below you can see in Fig. 1 the files and directories of imgmvtut-files.

Figure 1: Directory structure of imgmvtut-files

To start VMD type vmd in a Unix terminal window, double-click on the VMD application icon in the Applications folder in Mac OS X, or click on the Start $\rightarrow$ Programs $\rightarrow$ VMD menu item in Windows.