[extropy-chat] visualizing nanoscale

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sat, Nov 22, 2003 at 05:47:50PM +1000, Alejandro Dubrovsky wrote:

> You could give Blender a try.  I haven't used it for rendering purposes,

I'm very aware of it, but the UI is difficult for a novice. Also,
I doubt I can dump the virus surface from VMD, and can import it
into Blender.

> only as a modeller (and never seriously), and it doesn't import POVRay
> files (AFAIK), but it does have decent python bindings so it might not
> be too hard to import the data, and it seems to be the most popular GPL

It might be not hard for somebody who can program Python, yes. 

> modeller going around in case you want to do any other sort of 3d
> playing.  You could also have a look at renderman compatible renderers
> (never used, but Aqsis looks good enough.  There seem to be many
> around.  Blender can export to Renderman too).  There is really no need
> for ray-tracing.  Spheres look like spheres, and radiosity/lightning

The ray tracing is not a bottleneck, it's just a problem with full atomic
detail virus capsids. Do you know the resouce requirements of any of
these renderers:

http://www.scripps.edu/brooks/WEB_new/vmd_userguide/node96.html

?

> will make them look like so, but the reflection off the always metalicy
> floor just looks dated more than anything else.  And of course, you get
> a huge speedup bonus.

It takes time to arrange the picture, the rendering is only some 10 min
(provided, there's enough memory present).

-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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