Hi Damien,
Check the "subdivision quality" value in the Effects dialog
(menu Tools / Viewing Controls / Effects). This controls how
faceted the atom spheres and bond cylinders are. The default is
1.5. Higher values give smoother appearance but the rendering
can become slow depending on the speed of your graphics card. A
value of 10 would be high and 0.1 would be low.
There is another factor that can lead to faceted atom
spheres. If you have many atoms shown as spheres then Chimera
will reduce the quality of the spheres so that the graphics does
not become too slow. The exact rule is that it won't let you
use more than 4.5 million triangles for the spheres of one
molecule if subdivision quality is at its default value of 1.5.
For subdivision quality of 10 it would use up to 30 million
triangles (10 x 3 million). A big sphere might use about 450
triangles to look smooth, so at subdivision 1.5 you could go up
to 10,000 atoms shown as spheres before quality becomes limited.
Tom
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Chimera-users] Display at low definition
From: Damien Larivière
<damien.lariviere@fourmentinguilbert.org>
To: UCSF Chimera Mailing List
<chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu>
Date: 12/20/12 10:15 AM