First the Chimera command matrixget gives the position in the Chimera scene including any mouse rotation and translation you did to view the models. So you would have to consider positioning matrices for both maps. Even when you first open the maps and don’t move them, then fit one in the other, both maps probably have non-zero translations since the initial centering of the view on the first map does a translation. So using matrixget is not a good way to get the position of one map relative to another, unless you are going to invert one of the matrices and multiply times the other. Instead use the “measure rotation” command (e.g. measure rotation #0 #1) which reports a matrix in the reply log giving the motion of map #1 relative to the coordinates of map #2.

Another thing to be aware of is that these 3x4 matrices contain a rotation (the first 3 columns) and a translation (4th column) and the rotation is applied first, followed by the translation. The rotation is about center x,y,z = (0,0,0) but that is not necessarily grid point i=j=k=0 because the MRC file can have an origin offset. If you look in the Chimera volume viewer dialog coordinates panel (volume viewer menu Features / Coordinates) the origin grid index is given as “Origin index”. That is the grid point the rotation is centered on.

On Apr 24, 2017, at 9:30 AM, Oleksiy Kovtun <okovtun@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk> wrote:

Dear all,
I need to merge two maps in MATLAB using
alignment data from chimera. Inputs: two maps of the same box size, origin. I use matrixget - to report translation and rotation
matrices for the aligned map . Translation operation works well when transferred into MATLAB (briefly, translation matrix gets converted in eulers and pased on to tom_rotate command in MATLAB, TOM package). However the x y z translation coordinates (the fourth column top to bottom in matrixget - output) are way off the real translation when using tom_shift command in MATLAB, TOM.
I found out that if I open the rotated map
and fit it again, it gives close to correct translation
matrix.

What's going wrong here? Does anyone have a
solution how to overlay 3D arrays in MATLAB using chimera-reported transformation matrices?

Many
thanks,
Oleksiy

Dr Oleksiy Kovtun

Research Fellow

Briggs group

MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology

Francis Crick Avenue

Cambridge

CB2 0QH

UK

Tel: + 44 1223 267551

Email: okovtun@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk

Dr Oleksiy Kovtun
Research Fellow
Briggs group
MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
Francis Crick Avenue
Cambridge
CB2 0QH
UK

Tel: + 44 1223 267551
Email: okovtun@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk
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