VMD-L Mailing List

From: Maxim Belkin (mbelkin_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Thu Nov 27 2014 - 21:27:45 CST

I’ve recently made a figure that could benefit from reflections, so I’m voting for it. What are those secret env. variables, btw? This is not a deal breaker for science, but could be useful. Also, transparency could be more complex, i.e. materials could have index of refraction.

> On Nov 27, 2014, at 10:31, Norman Geist <norman.geist_at_uni-greifswald.de> wrote:
>
> Well, I wouldn't complain about having such a feature available =D
>
> Norman Geist.
>
>
>> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
>> Von: owner-vmd-l_at_ks.uiuc.edu [mailto:owner-vmd-l_at_ks.uiuc.edu] Im
>> Auftrag von John Stone
>> Gesendet: Mittwoch, 26. November 2014 20:50
>> An: vmd-l_at_ks.uiuc.edu
>> Betreff: vmd-l: Any interest in VMD supporting mirror reflections w/
>> ray tracing?
>>
>> Hi,
>> Both the CPU and GPU-accelerated Tachyon ray tracing engines
>> in VMD currently implement mirror reflections, however this feature
>> is not exposed in VMD itself (well it can be done, but only by setting
>> some magic environment variables).
>>
>> It would be relatively easy for me to add a new VMD material property
>> control to allow rendering of mirror reflections when using ray tracing
>> engines like Tachyon, as well as programs such as POV-Ray, etc.
>> I never added reflections before because they're poorly suited for
>> OpenGL.
>> Now that we have interactive ray tracing in VMD, it seems like it might
>> be
>> more plausible that people might want mirror reflections and other more
>> advanced material properties. Reflections are clearly useful for
>> making
>> "pretty" pictures, but I had previously assumed that's only a very very
>> small part of the usage of VMD. Do people think that would be useful
>> enough that they'd want it added into the VMD material properties
>> controls?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> John Stone
>> vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
>>
>> --
>> NIH Center for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
>> Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
>> University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
>> http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/ Phone: 217-244-3349
>> http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/
>