Chimera Animation Discussions

Translate current movie/animation examples into storyboard GUI interfaces.

• Look into the EMANimator extension, including:
  • ​http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/related/emanimator/emanimator.html
  • ​http://blake.bcm.tmc.edu/eman/
  • ​http://blake.bcm.edu/eman2/doxygen_html/
• Suggestion from Tom Goddard:
  • I think that your focus now should be on learning how to make simple animations in Chimera. I think you have to be a maker of animations to productively advance the code. Being a maker of animations will give you insight into what is needed. To make your own learning about how to create animations a productive enterprise it would be great if you could make screen capture videos to explain to users how to make simple animations. Also your own making of animations could produce interesting animations that might have value on Wikipedia to elucidate biomolecules of high interest. This could link to Chimera and encourage more people to make animations. A good source of interesting molecules are the Molecule of the Month entries at the PDB. They have very nice explanations. ​http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/explore/motm.do There's not a clear sense in the community of what makes a molecular animation useful. This is a fundamental obstacle and trying to make useful animations seems like the way to attack it.
  • May need screencast packages for Ubuntu 10.04, see ​http://screencasts.ubuntu.com/Creating_Screencasts

• Chimera meeting discussion: Aug 23, 2010
  • Collaborations drive the animation gallery, they may serve a purpose to define useful animation features for Chimera, which are required by specific users who have identified limitations in Chimera.
  • Review the presentations from the ​animation workshop
  • Proposal to implement ​key frames, with a simple GUI (a storyboard with transitions).
    • thumbnail images for each key-frame (key-frames may be named)
    • 'slide-layout' GUI for arranging and navigating key-frames
    • key-frame transition GUI
      • linear interpolations (automatic for some properties)
      • motion-specific transitions
      • 'selection inspector' may provide functionality to identify and display animation properties
      • draw from the session, savepos, reset, fly etc. commands for key-frame animation classes
    • functionality to save or export key-frames
      • similar to session functionality
      • export to high-end 3D software (​Maya, ​Blender, etc.)

• Chimera meeting discussion: Oct 4, 2010
  • Short demo of pilot implementation of animation commands and GUI, see:

    git clone ssh://chimera@weber.cgl.ucsf.edu/data/gitroot/chimera-extension
    # chimera-staff can obtain an ssh password for this git clone operation
    cd chimera-extension
    git tag -l
    git checkout pilot_demo_meeting20101004
    # Now the extension path can be added to Preferences > Tools etc.