Ray-tracing

[merritt at max.u.washington.edu]

In article <9007110354.AA04884 at adenosine.pharm.utah.edu>, davis at ADENOSINE.PHARM.UTAH.EDU ("Darrell R. Davis") writes:
> I have been using a ray tracing program called RASTER3D on my 4D/20
> for molecular modeling.  The quality of the images are better than any
> of the commercial packages that I have seen for this purpose.
> Although this is a specialized application, there may be something
> useful for your purpose.  Here is some information that I pulled out of
> the README file that is part of the package and also a part of the man
	[users guide stuff deleted]

	I can second the recommendation of RASTER3D as a ray-tracing program 
for molecular models.  As distributed it supports spheres and triangles as
object types.  I have hacked it up a bit for use on a 4D/20 so that it also
supports object types for flat-ended cylinders, round-ended cylinders, and
Phong-shaded triangles (original distribution was flat-shading only). I have
also modified the code to produce output directly to a *.rgb format file (as
per 4Dgifts/iristools/imgtools) so that the resulting pictures can easily be
edited with the imgtools utilities.  If people are interested I can make my
version avaiable, along with various conversion routines to go from a
Brookhaven PDB coordinate file to input descriptions for ribbon drawings, ball
and stick models, etc.

					Ethan A Merritt
					University of Washington SM-20
					Seattle, WA 98195
					merritt at xray0.bchem.washington.edu