Hi,

  this is my first attempt at animating molecular surfaces. Any comments
or suggestions ?

Lothar Esser

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Attachments:
Download 'helix3.mpg' (253 KB)

Neat-o.  No idea how you did the turbulent colors.  I would have thought it
was done with 'blob' components which have individual textures, but I've
never seen the boundaries anything but smooth.
This animation could be better if made more loopable, the sky being what's
causing it not to be.  You might try to 'phase' the 'color_map' instead of
rotate the sky at all.  Hmmm, but then it wouldn't be turning... oh well, I don't
have any other ideas.

Bob

"Lothar Esser" <ess### [at] chopswmededu> wrote in message
news:3903645B.CC9EE53F@chop.swmed.edu...
|
| Hi,
|
|   this is my first attempt at animating molecular surfaces. Any comments
| or suggestions ?
|
| Lothar Esser
|
|
|
|

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Hi there,

Bob Hughes wrote:

> Neat-o.  No idea how you did the turbulent colors.  I would have thought it
> was done with 'blob' components which have individual textures, but I've
> never seen the boundaries anything but smooth.

Do you mean the colors on the surface ? The surface consists of individual triangles
(14492) and was generated by a molecular graphics program GRASP. The colors on the
surface outline the contributions of certain types of atoms to the surface. i.e.
white surface area = CB atoms etc. ( This is why it looks a bit odd. It is
delibrately not smoothed ).  In the animation the filter value of
the colors of the surface was varied from 0 to 1 and back while at the same time
white was added
to the color up to 80 % to make the surface really transparent in the middle of the
animation.

> This animation could be better if made more loopable, the sky being what's
> causing it not to be.

'Loopable' meaning  a full rotation of the sky so that one would not see the
begining/end of the animation ? I tried this but the sky is just way to fast for 45
frames. I tried a still sky with clouds forming and disappearing but I had trouble
with this too because I did not want to 'undo' exactly what was done. Anyhow I agree
the sky is not too good. I have not used 'extra' things in povray alot
before - only molecules and surfaces but rarely planes ( floor ) let alone sky !

> You might try to 'phase' the 'color_map' instead of
> rotate the sky at all.  Hmmm, but then it wouldn't be turning... oh well, I don't
> have any other ideas.

Thanks for the comments. I really appreciate this.

Lothar.

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"Lothar Esser" <ess### [at] chopswmededu> wrote in message
news:39036D18.3391859B@chop.swmed.edu...
|
| Do you mean the colors on the surface ? The surface consists of individual triangles
| (14492) and was generated by a molecular graphics program GRASP. The colors on the
| surface outline the contributions of certain types of atoms to the surface. i.e.
| white surface area = CB atoms etc.

I see.  That's a great effect done in a way I wouldn't have thought possible.
Back to the sky, there's the tiling include file which could probably do a continuous
motion which loops.  Just make the clouds using that on a plane and translate
across once.  The only difficult part would be scaling it right for the view and
that really shouldn't be much of a problem.
In case you don't know of it yet:
http://www.geocities.com/ccolefax/tilegen.html

Bob

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you need to make the transparent part of the anim last longer, i had to look
at individual frames to see it properlly, also the sky dosnt help, and am
not sure about the colours used when the object is solid - looks a bit
weird..

sorry to sound so negative, i really like what you have done so far tho :)

Rick

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"Rick [Kitty5]" wrote:

> you need to make the transparent part of the anim last longer, i had to look
> at individual frames to see it properlly, also the sky dosnt help, and am
> not sure about the colours used when the object is solid - looks a bit
> weird..
>
> sorry to sound so negative, i really like what you have done so far tho :)
>
> Rick

You are absolutely right. The sky is not very good.  I had planned to make the
tranparent part longer and I tried to acomplish it by going from opaque to
tranparent with a steep gradient but it was not enough. Thanks for the comments
though.

Lothar

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