On Mar 28, 2008, at 2:50 PM, Ryan Pavlovicz wrote:
Hi Eric,
I saw your response on the Chimera user group to a question about saving images in nogui mode. You mentioned:
With POVray in the latest snapshot, you can now use the "raytrace"
keyword of the copy command to get a ray-traced image in nogui mode.
--Eric
Could you explain how to implement this? I could not figure it out. Thanks,
ryan
Well you probably had trouble because, unbeknownst to me, what I wrote wasn't actually true. Currently, the geometry generation code of Chimera is intimately tied up with the OpenGL code, so Chimera still needs an OpenGL context even in nogui mode in order to generate the geometry to send to POVray. Rather than engage in an extensive rewrite of the Chimera internals, what we are doing for now is making builds that include the OS (off screen) Mesa libraries. We are making such builds for 32 and 64 bit Linux platforms, but only the 64- bit version is building right now. We expect to get the 32-bit version working as time allows in the next few weeks. You can get the 64-bit version by following the "Daily Builds" link off the Chimera home page. We aren't planning to make OS Mesa builds for the other platforms, but if there were enough demand we could change our minds. I've attached an image generated by the following set of commands: windowsize 640 480 open 3fx2 preset apply int 3 turn y 180 focus ligand copy file 3fx2 png raytrace 
