Raster3D(1) General Commands Manual Raster3D(1)
NAME
Raster3D - molecular graphics package
SYNOPSIS
The Raster3D molecular graphics package consists of a core program render and a number of ancillary programs (balls, rastep, rods) which
produce input files for rendering from PDB (Protein Data Bank) files of atomic coordinates. Raster3D can also render images composed using
other programs such as MOLSCRIPT [Per Kraulis (1991), J. Appl. Cryst. 24, 946-950].
Raster3D is freely available. If you use the package to prepare figures for publication, please give proper credit to the authors. The
proper citation for the current version is Merritt & Bacon (1997).
Bacon & Anderson (1988) J. Molec. Graphics 6, 219-220.
Merritt & Murphy (1994) Acta Cryst. D50, 869-873.
Merritt & Bacon (1997) Meth. Enzymol. 277, 505-524.
DESCRIPTION
Raster3D uses a fast Z-buffer algorithm to produce high quality pixel images featuring one shadowing light source, additional non-shadowing
light sources, specular highlighting, transparency, and Phong shaded surfaces. Output is in the form of a pixel image with 24 bits of
color information per pixel. Raster3D does not depend on graphics hardware.
The following image output formats are supported: AVS, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and SGI libimage. To actually view or manipulate the images pro-
duced, you must also have installed an image viewing package (e.g. John Cristy's ImageMagick or the SGI libimage utilities). A filter
utility avs2ps is included in the package which can convert an AVS format output stream directly to a dithered monochrome PostScript image.
Although Raster3D is not intended as a general purpose ray-tracing package, nothing in the rendering process is specific to molecular
graphics.
EXAMPLES
Using only programs included in the Raster3D distribution one can create and render space-filling models, ball-and-stick models, ribbon
models, and figures composed of any combination of these. The following set of commands would produce a composite figure of an Fe-contain-
ing metalloprotein with a smoothly shaded ribbon representation of the protein and spheres drawn for the Fe atoms:
#
# Draw smooth ribbon with default color scheme 2,
# save description (with header records) in ribbon.r3d
#
cat protein.pdb | ribbon -d2 > ribbon.r3d
#
# Extract Fe atoms only, and draw as spheres.
# Color info is taken from colorfile.
# Save description (with no header records) in irons.r3d
#
grep "FE" protein.pdb | cat colorfile - | balls -h > irons.r3d
#
# combine the two descriptions and render to a PNG image
#
cat ribbon.r3d irons.r3d | render > picture.png
Integrated use of MOLSCRIPT/Raster3D/ImageMagick allows one to describe, render, and view 3D representations of existing MOLSCRIPT figures:
molscript -r infile.dat | render | display png:-
SOURCE
web URL:
http://www.bmsc.washington.edu/raster3d/raster3d.html
contact:
Ethan A Merritt
University of Washington, Seattle WA 98195
merritt@u.washington.edu
SEE ALSO
render(l), rastep(l), rods(l), ribbon(l), balls(l), avs2ps(l), stereo3d(l)
AUTHORS
Originally written by David J Bacon and Wayne F Anderson.
Ancillary programs by Mark Israel, Stephen Samuel, Michael Murphy, Albert Berghuis, and Ethan A Merritt. Extensions, revisions, and modi-
fications by Ethan A Merritt.
Raster3D V3.0 14 December 2010 Raster3D(1)