Wednesday, June 13, 2007

getting vrml / wavefront from molecular data into blender 3d . vol 1


So far getting the VRML output from different softwares has been a bit of a chore. We started out using
  • Rasmol. It renders the sticks in VRML however it doesn't do the ribbons.... stay tuned for updates this summer - the developers have noted the bug and emailed me back to say they're aimin' to squash it
  • Chimera It renders the VRML for anything, however having a time getting the files in to blender
  • VMD Halelujah - well it's a different approach altogether... and who'da thunk. Had to use an older version to run it on my osx 3.xx powerpc and... score - rendered to wavefront and... shazaam...

Well least surprising surprise d'jour - PDB2Blend is some wiley kraut's python script for getting the data straight - doesn't do everything VMD does... ball and stick, space fill, and a stick.... still very cool