McCarty Group Wiki

Making High Quality Figures in VMD

To make an image with AO (ambient occlusion lighting) and depth cueing

Try changing the Display Rendermode to GLSL (requires modern graphics card with OpenGL capability):

Display --> Rendermode --> GLSL

Change the Display Settings:

Display --> Display Settings ...

Choose:

• Shadows On
• Amb Occl On
• Cue Mode: Linear
• Cue Start: 1.75
• Cue End: 3.0

Now change the background to white and remove the axis:

Graphics --> Colors: Display : Background : White  

Display --> Axes --> Off  

Experiment with different renderings

Try AOChalky (for tachyon ray tracer rendering). Glossy material looks nice in snapshot rendering.

Experiment with depth cuing and orthographic perspective

Under the Display tab uncheck Depth Cueing and change from Perspective to Orthographic

Render high resolution image

Use Tachyon module in File Render Controls:

File --> Render ...  --> Tachyon  

In the same File Render Controls panel add the flag -res xxx yyy defining the number of pixels of the image. For example:

"/usr/local/lib/vmd/tachyon_LINUXAMD64" -aasamples 12 %s -format TARGA -res 1600 1200 -o %s.tga