Ray

DESCRIPTION

"ray" creates a ray-traced image of the current frame. This can take some time (up to several minutes, depending on image complexity).

USAGE

ray [width,height [,renderer [,angle [,shift ]]] 

angle and shift can be used to generate matched stereo pairs

EXAMPLES

ray
ray 1024,768
ray renderer=0

PYMOL API

 
 cmd.ray(int width,int height,int renderer=-1,float shift=0)

NOTES

Perspective

PyMol 0.97 and prior used orthoscopic rendering -- that is, no perspective. Upon the arrival of 0.98 and later, we get perspective based rendering at a cost of a 4x decrease in render speed. If you want perspective

set orthoscopic, off

Otherwise

set orthoscopic, on

To magnify the effect of perspective on the scene,

set field_of_view, X

where 50<X<70. Default is 20. 50-70 gives a very strong perspective effect. Nb. the field of view is in Y, not X as one would expect.

Renderer

renderer = -1 is default (use value in ray_default_renderer) renderer = 0 uses PyMOL's internal renderer renderer = 1 uses PovRay's renderer. This is Unix-only and you must have "x-povray" in your path. It utilizes two temporary files: "tmp_pymol.pov" and "tmp_pymol.png".

SEE ALSO

"help faster" for optimization tips with the builtin renderer. "help povray" for how to use PovRay instead of PyMOL's built-in ray-tracing engine.

USER Comments

How do I ray trace a publication-ready (~300dpi) image using PyMol?

This answer is in the Advanced Issues (Image Manipulation Section).