Question about clipping and transparency
Hello All, I am experiencing an issue when I am trying to make a movie of a series of coupled atomic models and volumes overlaid on top of each other. I cannot seem to make what I believe is called the "surface cap" transparent when I have clipped into a volume and I am showing/changing the volume. When I call the transparency command in ChimeraX itself (without the script running) it works as it should and makes the surface cap transparent, but in the movie-making script it seems like the transparency command is having no effect? Do you have any suggestions on how to deal with this? Thank you! Example .cxc code block attempt clip off; clip near -24.984; transparency #1.1 90; ######################### hide #!*.*; hide #!* models; show #!1.2 models; #show volume show #!3 models; #show atomic model transparency #1.2 90;transparency #1.2.1.1 90; wait 3 hide #!*.*; hide #!* models; show #!1.3 models; show #!4 models; transparency #1.3 90;transparency #1.3.1.1 90; wait 3 ######################### Best, John
Hi John, The usual cause of this kind of problem where a script does not produce the same rendering as typing the commands one by one is that the script doesn't render a new frame after each command. The script only renders a frame when their is a "wait" command. So for instance, you might issue the clip command, but no clip cap is created until a frame is rendered. But I'm not sure that is your problem, because for me clipping a volume and showing the clip cap as transparent works in current ChimeraX 1.11.1. Here's an example that works when put in a file test.cxc and opened open 1080 from emdb clip transp #1.1.1 30 Maybe you are using an old ChimeraX where the behavior is different. Please provide a complete and minimal example if you still have trouble getting this work. Tom
On Mar 29, 2026, at 12:21 PM, John Watters via ChimeraX-users <chimerax-users@cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:
Hello All,
I am experiencing an issue when I am trying to make a movie of a series of coupled atomic models and volumes overlaid on top of each other. I cannot seem to make what I believe is called the "surface cap" transparent when I have clipped into a volume and I am showing/changing the volume. When I call the transparency command in ChimeraX itself (without the script running) it works as it should and makes the surface cap transparent, but in the movie-making script it seems like the transparency command is having no effect? Do you have any suggestions on how to deal with this? Thank you!
Example .cxc code block attempt clip off; clip near -24.984; transparency #1.1 90; ######################### hide #!*.*; hide #!* models; show #!1.2 models; #show volume show #!3 models; #show atomic model transparency #1.2 90;transparency #1.2.1.1 90; wait 3
hide #!*.*; hide #!* models; show #!1.3 models; show #!4 models; transparency #1.3 90;transparency #1.3.1.1 90; wait 3 #########################
Best, John _______________________________________________ ChimeraX-users mailing list -- chimerax-users@cgl.ucsf.edu <mailto:chimerax-users@cgl.ucsf.edu> To unsubscribe send an email to chimerax-users-leave@cgl.ucsf.edu <mailto:chimerax-users-leave@cgl.ucsf.edu> Archives: https://mail.cgl.ucsf.edu/mailman/archives/list/chimerax-users@cgl.ucsf.edu/
participants (2)
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John Watters -
Tom Goddard