[Chimera-users] Making an omnimax POVray movie

[Kristina Furse]

Hi-

We're interested in using Chimera to prepare POVray files for a movie to be
shown on a hemispherical dome. The first part of the movie will be a 360 degree
rotation of a DNA/drug complex showing water occupancy around the drug, and the
second half will come from an AMBER MD trajectory. We've figured out the
content and rendering. The two remaining issues are that the camera must be
changed from "perspective" to "omnimax" (fisheye), and the extensive rendering
time that will be required for the large system at very high resolution
(4096x4096). Here is our plan:

1. Use a command-line script to rotate the system and export the scene to x3d
files.
2. Use per-frame scripting in MD movie to export each trajectory frame to x3d
files.
3. Use x3d2pov to translate into *.pov files.
4. Change the camera from perspective to omnimax in each .pov file.
5. Render the individual images in parallel on our cluster using povray
(different version than the one that ships with Chimera).
6. Compress to jpeg.
7. Assemble movie as .mov (format compatible with projection system in the
dome).

Does anyone have a better idea? I'm assuming that I can't change the camera to
omnimax from within Chimera?

Thanks for any suggestions!
Kristina

--
Kristina Furse
Postdoctoral Research Associate
262 Stepan Chemistry Hall
Notre Dame, IN 46556
(574)631-3904