On Mon, 17 Oct 2005, Doug Huff wrote:

I work at Arkitek studios. We create rendered 3D for the science and technology crowd. I am a animator and have been charged with creating a rendering of a ribbon model in 3DS max (our software package). Your Chimera program displays the type of geometry I need and I can import vrml into my application. I can't seem to find the method to export ribbon models to vrml. When I use the multiscale models tools I always wind up with a surface model. Please remember I am not a scientist :)

In the recent release candidates and the imminment production release (1.2180), there is an "Export Scene" option in the File menu. It lets you export all of the scene information in X3D, Pov-ray or RenderMan format (surfaces, ribbons, atoms, bonds, ...). There is also VRML output for just surfaces. If you want ribbons in VRML, you'll need to first export the scene in X3D format and then convert it. There various tools for X3D and VRML listed at <http://www.web3d.org/applications/tools/utilities_and_translators/>. You can also use XML Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT), <http://www.web3d.org/x3d/content/X3dToVrml97.xslt>, to convert the XML-based X3D file to VRML. A large list of XSLT software is at <http://dmoz.org/Computers/Data_Formats/Markup_Languages/XML/Style_Sheets/XSL/Implementations/>. Information about XSL and XSLT, can be found at <http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/>. Because there are so many tools available to convert X3D to VRML, it may be some time before we integrate one into chimera. Greg Couch UCSF Computer Graphics Lab gregc@cgl.ucsf.edu