VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Fri Apr 04 2008 - 17:59:52 CDT

Hi,
  The Images and Movies tutorial explains how to take the .dat file
and re-render it at arbitrarily high resolution. Basically you just
need to re-run Tachyon with an extra "-res xxx yyy" parameter to tell
it how large you want the image. See the top of the .dat file and
it should incorporate the rest of the command line you'll need.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Fri, Apr 04, 2008 at 03:42:08PM -0700, Lixia Jin Day wrote:
> John,
>
> I used Tachyon and got two files: plot.dat and plot.dat.bmp. The
> plot.dat.bmp is a little bigger than the snapshot bmp file. They have
> similar qualities when viewing in photoshop. I cannot zoom in 200% and still
> have smooth figures. My molecules are in tube and VMD.
>
> I also downloaded POV-Ray and rendered in pov then ran POV-Ray to get a bmp
> file. It even has a worse quality.
> I believe there is some techniques that I don't know. What do you think my
> problem is?
>
> I want to have a figure that I can zoom in 400%+.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Lixia
>
> On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 2:36 PM, John Stone <johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu> wrote:
>
> >
> > Hi,
> > The "Snapshot" renderer simply captures the on-screen image, so
> > the only thing that matters there is how large the display window is.
> >
> > The resolution controls in the graphical representations window change
> > the _geometric_ resolution of the polygonal model of the molecular
> > structure,
> > but not the image resolution.
> >
> > If you want to generate high resolution images for printing, you'll
> > likely want to use one of the external renderers. I'd suggest starting
> > out with Tachyon as it is included with VMD and should be pretty easy to
> > use in a manner similar to what you've been doing already with the
> > Snapshot
> > renderer.
> >
> > I'd strongly recommend that you take a look at the VMD Image and Movies
> > tutorial for more guidance:
> >
> > http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Training/Tutorials/vmd-ref/imgmv/tutorial-html/index.html
> >
> > Cheers,
> > John Stone
> > vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Apr 04, 2008 at 02:27:04PM -0700, Lixia Jin Day wrote:
> > > When I render to BMP it always gives the same size(resolution) figures
> > no
> > > matter what resolution I set in Graphical representations.
> > > When I render to PS, the figure is not very smooth though the resolution
> > is
> > > high.
> > > I don't know other render formats.
> > >
> > > What is the best way to render figures for publication? Thanks!
> > >
> > > Lixia
> >
> > --
> > 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
> > 

-- 
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