From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 26 2002 - 11:17:33 CST

Hi,

On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 04:47:22PM +0000, Marc Baaden wrote:
> * RASTER3d
> I noticed some problems with rendering secondary structure (cartoon)
> plots via the raster3d output. Some strands are 'transparent' although
> they should be filled/solid.

Interesting, I haven't seen this before. Do you suspect its a bug in
VMD's Raster3D output, or in Raster3D itself?

> * POVRAY
> For povray output, I wonder which is the correct width/height aspect
> ratio ? The example gives 400x500, but I am not sure whether that is
> correct .. obviously what I want is that a square is a square. How
> is this value to be determined (eg does it depend on the actual window
> size used, ..) ?

Use the same resolution as the VMD OpenGL display window and you'll
have the same aspect ratio. You can set the shape of the VMD OpenGL
window (in the newest revs of VMD) with "display resize XXXX YYYY".

> * TACHYON
>
> I also tried tachyon. It's nice because it is very similar to what one
> sees on the screen, and very fast. But 3 remarks
> - it would be nice if png output was compiled in the version that comes
> with VMD. I tried downloading the tachyon source and compiling it
> with JPEG and PNG options. PNG worked, JPEG gives me errors like
>
> "JPEG parameter struct mismatch: library thinks size is 372, caller expects 376"

Sounds like your JPEG include files don't match the version of the JPEG
library on your computer. I bet if you look around you'll find multiple
copies laying around on your machine, get rid of all the old ones and/or
change the Tachyon Make-config file to use the correct include file for
the library you're linking against, and you should be in ok shape.

> but more importantly the downloadable tachyon version (0.93.4) does
> not understand the current VMD output (where tachyon v 0.93.6 is included).

That's correct, I haven't released this new version of Tachyon yet, I'm
still finishing a few things up. I will release it by the time VMD 1.8
is finished, but there are a couple more things left to be done.

> - how can one increase the size of the created image, especially when
> working with -nodispdev ?

Use the display resize command in VMD:
  display resize XXXX YYYY

> - maybe it would be useful to have an option to predefine the size of
> the rendered image

There you go :-)

Thanks,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

-- 
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