To expand on Greg's explanation a little: many graphics cards/drivers have a maximum line width they are capable of drawing. When you render an image with supersampling N, each "tile" is drawn N times larger than normal and then sampled back down to its final size. This greatly reduces the "stair stepping" on the edges of ribbons and so forth since the pixels in the final image are a blend of NxN original pixels. This also means that lines have to be drawn N times thicker in each tile so that they are the right size in the final image. If that thickness is beyond the capabilities of your graphics card/driver then those lines will look thinner than they should in the final image.

For an image of the size you're making (4096x3072) you probably don't need any supersampling unless it's going to be displayed at poster size. In the image-saving dialog at the bottom it will say what the maximum line width you can use in the Chimera window without any reduction in the final image at your current supersampling setting. If that information text is colored red, then the line thickness in the image will be less than the current line thickness in the Chimera window. So you could experiment with what maximum supersampling setting you could use without the lines thinning in the image.

Eric Pettersen

UCSF Computer Graphics Lab

http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu

On Dec 22, 2009, at 10:01 AM, Greg Couch wrote:

The maximum line width depends on your graphics driver. When you save an image with the Save Image dialog, the bottom line above the buttons show the "effective maximum line width". If you reduce the size of the image or reduce the amount of supersampling, then you can have larger lines.

- Greg

On Tue, 22 Dec 2009, Dipl.-Ing. Thomas Mitterfellner wrote:

Hello!
I am making large images (4096x3072) which use silhouette edges and dashed wire-style bonds. When I increase the width of the silhouette edges, I do see that on the screen, but the output image turns out the same regardless of this setting. The same is true for my dashed bonds. Is this some issue of graphics card (GeForce 6200) or am I missing something?

Thank you,

Thomas
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