[Chimera-users] POV-Ray surface color

[Elaine Meng]

Hi Greg,
This is not an answer to your question per se, just sharing my own perspective.  

(1) The Chimera export to POVray has many imperfections and even without the problem you describe, in my experience, the POVray result often looks dark and dingy.

(2) I have much better success rendering with Chimera directly.  It depends what effect you are trying to achieve, but you can turn on shadows (e.g. command "set shadows") and adjust the shininess directly in Chimera.  Another big advantage is that WYSIWYG.  See Chimera "Image Tips" for a list of image-related parameters and all the says in which you can change them.

<https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/print.html#tips>

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


> On Nov 15, 2020, at 10:33 AM, Greg Williams <gregoryw at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> I am rendering a two-submit protein, split, with different colored mesh surfaces on the subunits. If I render to an image with Chimera, the surfaces appear in the colors assigned. If I render with POV-Ray, both mesh surfaces render as black. I assigned the colors using MSMS surface attributes with color sources as "atoms", using the color well in the Component Atom Attributes panel. 
> 
> Where in the literature should I read to sort this out?
> 
> Thanks!