Blender is free alternative to 3ds Max or Maya available from <http://www.blender.org>. I am not qualified to compare them, so my recommendation is for you to download blender and try it out to see if you like it. If you have already bought and are comfortable with 3ds Max, then there is probably no reason to change. - Greg On Mon, 30 Oct 2006, Lydia Jablonski wrote:
Jonathan and Greg-
Thank you for your suggestions. I wanted to at least try them before I responded.
Exporting VRML: I did try the export to VRML from version 1.2304 and it is good to know that it works for ribbons now. Unfortunately, the imported VRML meshes don't seem to respond to the mesh smoothing in 3ds max. With the .pdb --> .pov --> .3ds --> .max workflow I'm able to get a completely smooth surface on the ribbon. With the imported .wrl (VRML) I am able to see the triangulation on the surface, especially with shiny materials. Increasing the subdivision quality in Chimera makes these triangles smaller, but they are still visible.
Blender: Can you explain more the advantages of Blender for rendering/animating molecular models? I've been using 3ds max for quite a while (since the DOS days) so I feel very comfortable with it. But the need to work with molecular models is new so I'm still bumping around trying to figure out what all the possibilities are. If another 3D animation program would work better with exported .pdb files I'd be willing to pick it up.
Any more pointers would be much appreciated.
-Lydia