RFE: set independent

[jaremko@…]

The following bug report has been submitted:
Platform: Windows-10-10.0.18362
ChimeraX Version: 0.91 (2019-10-10)
Description
Cannot set independent rotation of models in tile view or in general as you can in chimera:
​http://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/midas/tile.html
​http://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/midas/set.html#independent

Log:
ui mousemode rightMode zoom

lighting soft

graphics silhouettes true

hide atoms

show cartoons

UCSF ChimeraX version: 0.91 (2019-10-10)
© 2016-2019 Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
How to cite UCSF ChimeraX

open grid-hs/joshua-
tor_hpc_home/jaremko/cryoEM/2019-09-30_x124-Nuc207/P10/J57/cryosparc_P10_J57_class_00_final_volume.mrc
grid-hs/joshua-
tor_hpc_home/jaremko/cryoEM/2019-09-30_x124-Nuc207/P10/J57/cryosparc_P10_J57_class_01_final_volume.mrc
grid-hs/joshua-
tor_hpc_home/jaremko/cryoEM/2019-09-30_x124-Nuc207/P10/J57/cryosparc_P10_J57_class_02_final_volume.mrc

Opened cryosparc_P10_J57_class_00_final_volume.mrc, grid size 128,128,128,
pixel 2.81, shown at level 1.34, step 1, values float32

tile viewAll true

tile viewAll true

tile viewAll false

tile viewAll true

tile columns 3 viewAll true

Expected a keyword

Expected a keyword

OpenGL version: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 430.86
OpenGL renderer: GeForce GTX 1050 Ti with Max-Q Design/PCIe/SSE2
OpenGL vendor: NVIDIA Corporation

[pett]

Reported by Matt Jaremko

[Tom Goddard]

We need to think about how to do independent center of rotation in ChimeraX. In Chimera rotation moved models, so they were constantly changing their coordinates. In ChimeraX rotation does not move the models, only the camera moves. This is keeps the models at the same coordinates. Independent rotation has to move the models around, so that is different than moving the camera. Also many places in the code use the center of rotation point, for instance as the depth where the user is focussing, for instance to control the center of zooming by the zoom command. All the code that uses the center of rotation assumes there is one center of rotation, not a separate center for each point.

All this makes it a good bit of work to allow for "independent" center of rotation, a lot of complexity for a rarely used feature. Maybe in ChimeraX we should handle it differently. For instance, it would be much easier to provide a "rotate independent" mouse mode and leave the current simple center of rotation concept as is.

I think independent center of rotation is not a heavily used feature and we have lots of other missing features in ChimeraX, so it is unlikely we are going to work on this one in the near future. May just have to stick with Chimera to do this for now.

[pett]

Also requested by Martti Tolvanen: " I also use a lot of 3D superimposition, as in matchmaker, and independent rotation in a tiled display."

[pett]

Also requested by Taha Shahid, on behalf of multiple users

[Tom Goddard]

Also requested by Julianna Han. Ticket #5932

[Tom Goddard]

Fixed.

I made the tile command switch to a new independent rotation mouse mode. It changes the left mouse button to use that mouse mode. To revert to using the normal rotation mode that rotate all models as a single group use the new "tile off" command or equivalent "~tile" command. The tile mode also activates simple lighting, because lighting modes with ambient shadows cause very slow updating when rotating the models about each of their centers since the shadows need to be constantly updated. The "tile off" and "~tile" commands leave the lighting mode as simple lighting. The tile command has an independentRotation option (default true) and setting it to false will make it not switch the mouse mode or the lighting.

Another way to enable or disable the new independent rotation mouse mode without using the tile command is to use the mousemode command

mousemode left "rotate independent"
mousemode left rotate

The new independent rotation mouse mode will not help recording a movie where tiled models are all rotated in synchrony. To do that we could add an option to the turn command to do independent rotation. I have not added that, and another feature request ticket can be made if it is desired.

[jaremko@…]

Thanks for the update!

Matt