Subject: Re: CCL:Polymer animations?

From: Barry Isralewitz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 15:31:50 -0600

Hi,

Kevin wrote:
> > > > simulation.  I would like this information to make a movie of the
> > > > polymer in action under this force field.  Therefore, I'm looking for
> > > > a simple, public-domain piece of software that I can feed these
> > > > coordinates to, and will generate the corresponding graphics and play
> > > > them back as a movie.

  One solution is VMD, free molecular visualization software...

http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/

	The method of much movie making is:

	1. Generate a series of numbered frames
	 (e.g. movie-0001.tiff ... movie-0600.tiff)
	2. Turn them into a single movie file for playback.

In reverse order, 

Step 2:

	The easy part is step 2.  A number of utilities turn numbered
frames into movies.  Some examples: ImageMagick convert (most UNIXes),
mediaconvert (SGI), many Macintosh and Windows-based programs. 

	Get ImageMagick 'convert' for free your Unix box at:
http://www.imagemagick.org/

	Note that animated gifs have limited colors (256) and often
are displayed with programs (e.g. web browsers) that skip frames for a
large file.  An mpeg or quicktime movie makes more sense, and even
reasonably large frame sizes play great on modern machines.

Step 1:

	The harder (and occasionally more fun) part is step 1, making
the frames.

	See the VMD script library:
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/script_library/

	or more specifically the trajectory/animation and 'movies'
sections of the script library:

http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/script_library/categories/animation.html
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/script_library/categories/movies.html

A sample script is 'animatepdbs'

http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/script_library/scripts/animatepdbs/

	For  a look at some VMD animations (Quicktime format), see

http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Overview/movie_gallery/qt_movies/

					Cheers,

					Barry

-- 
Barry Isralewitz     Beckman 3121    Theoretical Biophysics Group, UIUC  
Office Phone: (217) 244-1612    Home Phone: (217) 337-6364
email: [email-masked]      http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~barryi