As you found out, VRML has limited support for transparency, and that is one reason why chimera's native export format is X3D. VRML's transparency is limited to a single value per shape, and X3D's transparency can vary within a shape. Tom's example only worked because the surface was of a single color. FYI, if you are just interested in molecular surfaces, it should be fairly easy to extract the information you need out of the X3D file and write it out in whatever format your modeling program needs. - Greg On Fri, 28 Aug 2009, Tom Goddard wrote:
Hi Christian,
I'm not sure what version of Chimera you are using, but with the current daily build, the VRML export (File / Export Scene...) does include transparency of surfaces. I believe older Chimera versions (1.3, ...) also do this. I made a transparent red icosahedron and writing as vrml
shape icos div 1 color 1,0,0,0.3 export format vrml ~/Desktop/test.vrml
The resulting vrml text file does have the transparency information, and when I open it in Chimera it is transparent (although Chimera does not display transparency of VRML models correctly). So quite possibly the program you are using to read the VRML is ignoring the transparency.
Tom
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Chimera-users] Exporting surfaces as vrml From: Christian Hesketh To: chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu Date: 8/28/09 9:50 AM
Hi there, I am trying to export molecular surfaces with varying transparencies to vrml, but the resultant model has a completely opaque surface. Is there anyway to export surfaces with transparent features to a 3D model? I would rather not work with x3d files as there don't seem to be any good 3D modeling programs that can accept this format. Thanks in advance, Christian ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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