
Hi, One feature I really appreciated about chimera was the ability to make pictures without a background, however recently i realized this is not possible anymore I checked out under the effects dialog under tools>viewing controls and it give me an error saying this wasn't supported. I haven't changed my computer since i first started using chimera I have updated to the latest version of chimera available for OSX 10.4, I wonder if this is the cause of the problem. I would really like to have pictures without backgrounds like I used to, I know PyMol lets you do it, but I dislike this program. In any case I would greatly appreciate any help/pointers on this issue. Thanks in advance. abbas.

On Fri, 14 Dec 2007, Abbas wrote:
Hi, One feature I really appreciated about chimera was the ability to make pictures without a background, however recently i realized this is not possible anymore I checked out under the effects dialog under tools>viewing controls and it give me an error saying this wasn't supported. I haven't changed my computer since i first started using chimera I have updated to the latest version of chimera available for OSX 10.4, I wonder if this is the cause of the problem. I would really like to have pictures without backgrounds like I used to, I know PyMol lets you do it, but I dislike this program. In any case I would greatly appreciate any help/pointers on this issue. Thanks in advance. abbas.
Transparent backgrounds depend on the graphics card capabilities reported by OpenGL. On Mac OS X, Apple decided not to support background transparency (nor full window antialiasing) for OpenGL/X11 applications, so to use that feature you would have to use the Aqua version of chimera. Unfortunately, the chimera's cross-platform user interface toolkit, Tk, while improving for Aqua, has gotton worse for chimera, so you'll have to use an old version of chimera for Aqua to get transparent backgrounds. You can also file a bug report with Apple to help them decide to spend the time to fix it (OpenGL "destination alpha" and multisampling not supported in X11). Greg Couch UCSF Computer Graphics Lab

You can also render your images using PovRay with transparent backgroung as a setting Paul Le 17 déc. 07 à 18:43, Greg Couch a écrit :
On Fri, 14 Dec 2007, Abbas wrote:
Hi, One feature I really appreciated about chimera was the ability to make pictures without a background, however recently i realized this is not possible anymore I checked out under the effects dialog under tools>viewing controls and it give me an error saying this wasn't supported. I haven't changed my computer since i first started using chimera I have updated to the latest version of chimera available for OSX 10.4, I wonder if this is the cause of the problem. I would really like to have pictures without backgrounds like I used to, I know PyMol lets you do it, but I dislike this program. In any case I would greatly appreciate any help/pointers on this issue. Thanks in advance. abbas.
Transparent backgrounds depend on the graphics card capabilities reported by OpenGL. On Mac OS X, Apple decided not to support background transparency (nor full window antialiasing) for OpenGL/X11 applications, so to use that feature you would have to use the Aqua version of chimera. Unfortunately, the chimera's cross-platform user interface toolkit, Tk, while improving for Aqua, has gotton worse for chimera, so you'll have to use an old version of chimera for Aqua to get transparent backgrounds. You can also file a bug report with Apple to help them decide to spend the time to fix it (OpenGL "destination alpha" and multisampling not supported in X11).
Greg Couch UCSF Computer Graphics Lab _______________________________________________ Chimera-users mailing list Chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/mailman/listinfo/chimera-users

Paul sent me this in a separate mail, which seems relevant... I've just been able to raytrace with alpha channel by disabling the fog in the povray file. I don't know if it has always been necessary... if so, sorry for the trouble Paul --Eric Eric Pettersen UCSF Computer Graphics Lab http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu On Dec 17, 2007, at 10:17 AM, Paul Pillot wrote:
You can also render your images using PovRay with transparent backgroung as a setting Paul
Le 17 déc. 07 à 18:43, Greg Couch a écrit :
On Fri, 14 Dec 2007, Abbas wrote:
Hi, One feature I really appreciated about chimera was the ability to make pictures without a background, however recently i realized this is not possible anymore I checked out under the effects dialog under tools>viewing controls and it give me an error saying this wasn't supported. I haven't changed my computer since i first started using chimera I have updated to the latest version of chimera available for OSX 10.4, I wonder if this is the cause of the problem. I would really like to have pictures without backgrounds like I used to, I know PyMol lets you do it, but I dislike this program. In any case I would greatly appreciate any help/pointers on this issue. Thanks in advance. abbas.
Transparent backgrounds depend on the graphics card capabilities reported by OpenGL. On Mac OS X, Apple decided not to support background transparency (nor full window antialiasing) for OpenGL/X11 applications, so to use that feature you would have to use the Aqua version of chimera. Unfortunately, the chimera's cross-platform user interface toolkit, Tk, while improving for Aqua, has gotton worse for chimera, so you'll have to use an old version of chimera for Aqua to get transparent backgrounds. You can also file a bug report with Apple to help them decide to spend the time to fix it (OpenGL "destination alpha" and multisampling not supported in X11).
Greg Couch UCSF Computer Graphics Lab _______________________________________________ Chimera-users mailing list Chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/mailman/listinfo/chimera-users
_______________________________________________ Chimera-users mailing list Chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/mailman/listinfo/chimera-users

And just to follow this up. There was an alpha channel in the file, it's just all one (opaque). We will add documentation and/or a warning about not using fog if you want background transparency. - Greg On Thu, 20 Dec 2007, Eric Pettersen wrote:
Paul sent me this in a separate mail, which seems relevant...
I've just been able to raytrace with alpha channel by disabling the fog in the povray file. I don't know if it has always been necessary... if so, sorry for the trouble Paul
--Eric
Eric Pettersen UCSF Computer Graphics Lab http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu
On Dec 17, 2007, at 10:17 AM, Paul Pillot wrote:
You can also render your images using PovRay with transparent backgroung as a setting Paul
Le 17 d�c. 07 � 18:43, Greg Couch a �crit :
On Fri, 14 Dec 2007, Abbas wrote:
Hi, One feature I really appreciated about chimera was the ability to make pictures without a background, however recently i realized this is not possible anymore I checked out under the effects dialog under tools>viewing controls and it give me an error saying this wasn't supported. I haven't changed my computer since i first started using chimera I have updated to the latest version of chimera available for OSX 10.4, I wonder if this is the cause of the problem. I would really like to have pictures without backgrounds like I used to, I know PyMol lets you do it, but I dislike this program. In any case I would greatly appreciate any help/pointers on this issue. Thanks in advance. abbas.
Transparent backgrounds depend on the graphics card capabilities reported by OpenGL. On Mac OS X, Apple decided not to support background transparency (nor full window antialiasing) for OpenGL/X11 applications, so to use that feature you would have to use the Aqua version of chimera. Unfortunately, the chimera's cross-platform user interface toolkit, Tk, while improving for Aqua, has gotton worse for chimera, so you'll have to use an old version of chimera for Aqua to get transparent backgrounds. You can also file a bug report with Apple to help them decide to spend the time to fix it (OpenGL "destination alpha" and multisampling not supported in X11).
Greg Couch UCSF Computer Graphics Lab _______________________________________________ Chimera-users mailing list Chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/mailman/listinfo/chimera-users
_______________________________________________ Chimera-users mailing list Chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/mailman/listinfo/chimera-users
participants (4)
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Abbas
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Eric Pettersen
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Greg Couch
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Paul Pillot