Hi Roden,

  The full description of the ChimeraX --offscreen option from the documentation

"--offscreen

Use nogui mode and create a buffer for offscreen rendering. This option enables “headless” mode, allowing ChimeraX to render and save images and movies when it has no window, e.g., on a server where no desktop windowing system is available. It is currently supported only on Linux and uses OSMesa, a software rendering library included in Linux ChimeraX. It cannot use a graphics card or hardware-accelerated rendering because OpenGL does not support rendering without a window."

Note it is only available in Linux ChimeraX.

  As it explains the OpenGL graphics library using your system graphics hardware only allows rendering when a window is available.  So if you want rendering on the graphics card then you must use the ChimeraX GUI.  The ChimeraX window can be iconified.  On Mac and Windows this is the only way to render an image.  And on Linux there is a software implementation of rendering called OSMesa that does not use your graphics card that can do slower rendering that should have similar quality.

Tom

On Nov 7, 2025, at 12:15 AM, Roden Deng Luo via ChimeraX-users <chimerax-users@cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:

Hi,

In https://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/options.html, under `--offscreen`, it says "It cannot use a graphics card or hardware-accelerated rendering because OpenGL does not support rendering without a window."

I wonder if there are any possible ways to utilize graphics cards in the headless mode, or if you have any best practices for saving pictures/movies for hundreds to thousands of structures, with or without a GUI. 

Thanks,

Roden

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