[Chimera-users] Pov-Ray functionality

[Elaine Meng]

Hello Jeffrey,
Ah yes, nice images!

ChimeraX is a different program than Chimera, being built from the ground up.  So any differences are not the result of “removal” per se, and may still be planned for future implementation. However, we do not plan for the programs to be identifical, and I don’t know of any hard decision (either way) as to whether povray export will be included.  Currently ChimeraX has directional shadows similar to the option in Chimera, and “ambient-occlusion” multishadowing, which was not available in Chimera. 

There may be an intermediate solution:

In Chimera, the povray export is by making an initial X3D file and then running the x3d2pov conversion program included with Chimera (in the bin directory).  
<http://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/export.html>

ChimeraX does have export to X3D implemented (command “save” with “format x3d”), so maybe you could do that and then “manually” run the conversion program mentioned above.
<http://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/save.html#formats>

I hope this helps,
Elaine
-----
Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D.
UCSF Chimera(X) team
Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry
University of California, San Francisco

P.S. fine to send this here, but you may be interested to know there is another mailing list specifically for ChimeraX questions: chimerax-users at cgl.ucsf.edu

> On Oct 26, 2019, at 6:07 AM, Brown, Jeffrey <brownjw at wustl.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
>   I like a lot about ChimeraX; however, I can’t figure out how to export to POV-RAY format. Has this functionality been removed?
>   
>   Although there is a pseudo ray trace function in Chimera X - it is impossible to add scenes like I did in this publication
> https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0009406
> In which I used Chimera to render all of the proteins and then moved them around and added membrane etc. 
> Also there is a lot more control in POV-RAY as it is code that you can’t accidentally rotate with your mouse. 
> 
> Cheers, 
> JWB