May 2008 - Chimera-users - RBVI Mailing Lists

movie trajectory
by Jean-Paul Armache 06 May '08

06 May '08

hi all, i have a small question. would any of you know a way to set up a specific trajectory for a camera to move around the molecule? i know you can rotate the whole molecule, but the question is more related to similarity to 3ds max or maya - if you could set up a specific way the camera moves around the molecule (rotation, movement at specific point, zoom, stop, restart, further movement etc) ? maybe the question is trivial, however i haven't found a way to do it (an easy way - you can do quite a huge script with small movements - one step at a time). my question is more about path drawing and setting stop points. regards, jean-paul

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Re: [Chimera-users] transparent surfaces (fwd)
by Greg Couch 05 May '08

05 May '08

Just so everyone on the list knows. Extrapolating from what Charles said, the error was probably that MegaPOV wasn't able to include the transforms.inc file because MegaPOV wasn't configured properly to include the POV-Ray library files. And on Mac OS X, Linux, and other UNIX systems, to use the CHIMERA/bin/povray.exe program outside of chimera, you need to setup the shared library path to include CHIMERA/lib. Chimera does that setup automatically for many of the programs in CHIMERA/bin, so we should probably fix it for povray as well, but if you're going to use your own POV-Ray anyway, like the multi-threaded 3.7 beta release, then that is not an issue. - Greg ---------- Forwarded message ---------- I figured it out. In MegaPOV you need to set the library path for the render, also POVray 3.6 will not work as a standalone application in Mac OS 10.4 and higher. Charles On May 5, 2008, at 2:15 PM, Greg Couch wrote: > On Thu, 1 May 2008, Charles Midgett wrote: > >> I want to make a transparent surface in volume viewer that can be >> drawn in POVray. It appears the *.pov and *.ini files produced by >> Chimera cannot be read by other POVray renders. Is there some work >> around that will allow me to ray trace a transparent surface >> displayed by the volume viewer? >> >> Charles > > That is news to us. The chimera povray output was only tested with the > POV-Ray 3.6.1 renderer that comes with chimera. Please submit a bug report > using chimera's Help / Report a Bug dialog and include the name and version > number of the other POV-ray renderers, as well as the error message you get. > > Thank you, > > Greg Couch > UCSF Computer Graphics Lab

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Consistency of surface color
by Bui Khanh Huy 05 May '08

05 May '08

Hi all, I have a problem with color consistency on Chimera. The surface color of my model from my Windows server is different than that from my linux server. Even when I connect from home to the linux server, the color render is also different from those two above. I use the same session for all of them but the color comes out quite different on different machines. Is there anyway to avoid this inconsistency? Regards, Huy

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transparent surfaces
by Charles Midgett 05 May '08

05 May '08

I want to make a transparent surface in volume viewer that can be drawn in POVray. It appears the *.pov and *.ini files produced by Chimera cannot be read by other POVray renders. Is there some work around that will allow me to ray trace a transparent surface displayed by the volume viewer? Charles

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areaSAS_areaSES
by De Nicola, Gian 05 May '08

05 May '08

To whom it may concern I would like to calculate the areaSAS and areasSES using Chimera.This is what I do Load the structure tools Surface Binding Analysis area/volume from web I choose the type of surface I want. Click apply then Ok As an output I get " unexpected output from struc tools server" . What am I doing wrong? Regards Gian

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surfaces, electrostatic coloring
by Elaine Meng 03 May '08

03 May '08

On May 2, 2008, at 8:04 PM, James Fethiere wrote: > > Another wquestion. I managed to display separate surfaces for 2 > chains in a single model using the surfcat command you've > recommended last time. Is this command accessible through the menu? There is no menu equivalent to "surfcat," sorry. > > However, I can't color each surface separately according to > electrostatics. I know that chimera does not calculate > electrostatics. What I tried is to go to tools/surface binding/ > electrostatic surface coloring, set the palette to radius and set > the full range. What I get when I color is a gradation from red to > blue with no atom type discrimination. When you choose "radius" the coloring is by distance from a point, not electrostatics.. To actually color by electrostatics, you would have to open an electrostatic potential map and then choose it from that menu (the one with "radius" in it). Also, your two surfaces would be two separate entries in the menu listing the surfaces. You would have to choose one, color, and then choose the other, color again. Perhaps it is misleading to call this tool "Electrostatic Surface Coloring" when it is really identical to the "Surface Color" tool: it includes options to color by distance from a point, axis, or plane. The radial coloring is used (for example) to color a virus capsid by the distance from its center to highlight the contours of its surface; see the figure in the man page: http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/ContributedSoftware/surfcolor/ surfcolor.html Another possibly confusing thing is that in older versions of Chimera, after you use Surface Color, it can be tricky to change the color of the surfaces. In current versions (recent daily builds), you should just be able to color the surface with the menu (Actions... Color) or commands (color, rangecolor) regardless of whether this tool had been used. > So I go to the attributes of this map in the model panel, and color > source atoms. Great, I get red for acidic and blue for basics. > Now for the other chain, it doesn't work. At the color source atoms > step, the whole surface takes one single color. The other thing is > that in the model panel I do not have the small color icon for the > two maps!! Is there a better way to do this? The two surfaces would again be listed separately in the Model Panel, and have their own separate attributes dialogs. I don't know what you mean by "doesn't work." Did you try to use the menu or commands to color the surface? Also, I don't know what other things you did in the session, but the red and blue you were seeing were probably just the element colors: surfaces of oxygen atoms (red) and nitrogen atoms (blue). Maybe you had colored the atoms of one chain and not the other. In any case, you could proceed to color the surfaces with the menu and/or commands as mentioned above. If you don't have an electrostatic potential map and don't want to color by distance from a point, axis, or plane, there is no reason to use Surface Color. For example, to show the element colors on the surface for the two chains in 2zcp: open 2zcp surfcat one :.a & protein surfcat two :.b & protein surf one surf two col byatom (or "col byhet" to not change carbon color) Or, instead of using the atomic element colors, you could color :asp,glu residues red and :his,arg,lys residues blue. > > Can you also tell me how to make the surfaces smoother. Whatever > vertex density I give, I see pretty rough edges and it's not very > nice. The vertex density is the only way I know of for making the surface smoother. I am surprised it is not doing that in your case - it definitely works in the molecular surfaces I have tried: 5.0 is a lot better, 10.0 even better. Did you press return? The main drawback I ran into is that it can take a long time to calculate, rotate, etc. Maybe increasing the probe radius would improve your surface's appearance. I hope this helps, Elaine

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Sec structure loss
by James Fethiere 02 May '08

02 May '08

Hi, I'm seing something strange with secondary structure assignments in peptides. Two examples: PDB 1axc has a peptide bound to PCNA with beta strand interactions and chimera doesn't pick it up as a strand. In the other example, 1rxz, it picks up the strand in a similar peptide but the strand disappear when I run matchmaker with 1ul1 (which also has a strand at the c-terminus that is not picked up. Is there any explanation? Are the criteria for secondary structure assignments to strict? One more thing that may have been asked already!! how does one keeps the NH and CO of the peptide bond displayed in the ribbons view? Thanks James

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automated rebuilding of side chains?
by Ian Yarbrough 02 May '08

02 May '08

Hi, A model that I am working with has several missing or partial side chains, and I'm dealing with about 80 subunits of this protein (organized into 3 chains). I am trying to repair these, but don't want to go through the task of finding every broken chain. Is there a way to get chimera to locate the broken ones and repair them all? I've seen the dock prep feature, but don't want to change them all to alanines. Thanks for you help. Ian Yarbrough Texas A&M University

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adding metal ions
by Carlo Zambonelli 01 May '08

01 May '08

I have a pdb file with the coordinates of an apo-enzyme. I know Fe3+ and Zn2+ are essential for catalysis; I also know some of the residues involved in coordination of Fe3+ and Zn2+. Can I position 2 ions in the structure so that they are correctly oriented relative to the coordinating residues? My ultimate goal is to create a PDF file containing also the metal ions. Thanks, Carlo

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adding metal ions
by Carlo Zambonelli 01 May '08

01 May '08

I have a pdb file with the coordinates of an apo-enzyme. I know Fe3+ and Zn2+ are essential for catalysis; I also know some of the residues involved in coordination of Fe3+ and Zn2+. Can I position 2 ions in the structure so that they are correctly oriented relative to the coordinating residues? My ultimate goal is to create a PDF file containing also the metal ions. Thanks, Carlo

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