[Chimera-users] coloring a surface based on proximity to a point

[Elaine Meng]

Hi Hamish Todd,
Unfortunately, generally you cannot, because Color Zone will also reset the coloring of the rest of the surface that is not near the selected atoms or markers.

It does depend somewhat on the details of how you had attained the current coloring and whether your points are atoms that were used to calculate that surface (whether they have “patches” in the surface).

If you had colored the surface by specifying atoms and/or residues (to color their surface patches), or by hydrophobicity (since again it is based on which residues contributed which patches), you can again specify some atoms or residues to change only the color of just the corresponding patches.

However, if the surface were colored some other way such as by map data like densities or electrostatic potential, trying to color by atom/residue patch will reset the whole surface coloring.

I hope this clarifies the situation, although it may rule out what you want to do…
Elaine
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Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D. 
UCSF Computer Graphics Lab (Chimera team) and Babbitt Lab
Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry
University of California, San Francisco

> On Feb 25, 2017, at 5:15 PM, Hamish Todd <hamish.todd1 at googlemail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hey everyone. So I have a coloration for a set of surfaces that is very close to what I want. I want to make a change to it though: I want parts of the surfaces close to certain points to change their color. And I want the rest of the surface to be unchanged from the current coloring.
> 
> Is this possible? Would be much obliged if any advice could be offered!
> Hamish Todd
> 
> -- 
> @hamish_todd