From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Wed Sep 08 2010 - 16:08:05 CDT

Stefan,
  It seems there's a global POV-Ray setting to override this, perhaps
this could be inserted into the .pov scene file with a text editor
and retry the render?:
  http://www.povray.org/documentation/view/3.6.0/264/

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Wed, Sep 08, 2010 at 02:02:40PM -0700, Stefan Oliver wrote:
> Hi John,
>
> Thanks for the prompt reply. You're correct, there's an error message in
> POV-Ray...
>
> "Possible Rendering Error: Maximum trace level reached! If your scene
> contains black spots read more about the max_trace_level setting in the
> documentation!"
>
> Do you think this could be the cause of my problem? If so, any idea how it
> can be resolved?
>
> I've not been able to perform any rendering with VMD 1.8.7. When I
> installed VMD 1.8.7 it kept giving me a runtime error. I followed the
> suggested fixes but nothing cured the problem so I reverted back to VMD
> 1.8.6.
>
> I'm looking forward to your response.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Stefan
>
> ======================================
> Dr. Stefan L. Oliver
> Dept. of Pediatrics
> Stanford University School of Medicine
> Grant Building Room S366
> 300 Pasteur Drive
> Stanford, California 94305
> Tel: (+1) 650 725 6555
> Fax: (+1) 650 725 9828
> ======================================
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Stone [mailto:johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 12:26
> To: Stefan Oliver
> Cc: vmd-l_at_ks.uiuc.edu
> Subject: Re: vmd-l: Loss of VDW upon rendering with POV3
>
>
> Stefan,
> Do you get any errors or warning messages from POV-Ray during rendering?
> Have you tried rendering the same scene using VMD 1.8.7?
>
> Cheers,
> John Stone
> vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
>
> On Wed, Sep 08, 2010 at 12:10:34PM -0700, Stefan Oliver wrote:
> > Dear VMD-L Mailing List,
> >
> > Unusually I'm having a little trouble rendering some images from files
> > created by VMD. I'm using VMD 1.8.6 and POV-ray 3.62. The images I'm
> > attempting to render are two molecules with a combination of New Ribbon
> and
> > VDW representations. The curious, and frustrating, thing is that if I
> > render the image in one orientation the VDW representations are correctly
> > rendered. However, when the molecule is rotated about the X axis by 90
> > degrees (the top of the molecule is now closest to the screen) the New
> > Ribbon is rendered but annoyingly the VDW representations are not. I've
> > adjusted the Near Clip in the Display Settings but this does not help.
> > Curiously, when I generate the image files directly from VMD all of the
> > representations are present.
> >
> > I've done a basic search on the topic but couldn't find anything in the
> > list. What am I doing incorrectly?
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Stefan
> >
> > ======================================
> > Dr. Stefan L. Oliver
> > Dept. of Pediatrics
> > Stanford University School of Medicine
> > Grant Building Room S366
> > 300 Pasteur Drive
> > Stanford, California 94305
> > Tel: (+1) 650 725 6555
> > Fax: (+1) 650 725 9828
> > ======================================
> >
>
> --
> 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