Raster3D 2.7c review

Raster3D is a powerful set of tools for generating high quality raster images of proteins or other molecules

License: Other/Proprietary License File size: 1675K Developer: Biomolecular Structure Center at the University of

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Raster3D is a powerful set of tools for generating high quality raster images of proteins or other molecules.

The core program renders spheres, triangles, cylinders, and quadric surfaces with specular highlighting, Phong shading, and shadowing.

It uses an efficient software Z-buffer algorithm that is independent of any graphics hardware.

Here are some key features of "Raster3D":
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 plus one matte channel.
Raster3D does not depend on graphics hardware. The rendering program currently supports output to files in AVS, JPEG, TIFF, PNG and SGI libimage format. To actually view or manipulate the images produced, you must also have installed an image viewing package (e.g. John Cristy's ImageMagick or the SGI libimage utilities). The Raster3D rendering program can be integrated with ImageMagick to expand the flexibility of output formats and interactive use.
Ancillary programs are provided for the generation of object descriptions based on atomic coordinates stored in PDB format. Although Raster3D is not intended as a general purpose ray-tracing package, nothing in the rendering process is specific to molecular graphics. Some of the algorithms used have been chosen for speed rather than generality, however. They work well for molecular graphics images, but possibly would produce odd results if used for very different types of image.
Raster3D currently supports rendering six object types: spheres, triangles, planes, smooth-ended cylinders, round-ended cylinders, and quadric surfaces. It also supports the definition of material properties (transparency, bounding planes, color, reflectivity) that apply to groups of objects within the rendered scene.

What's New in This Release:
changed the default output format to PNG for all programs