Raster3d General Description

Raster3D is a set of tools for generating high quality raster images of proteins or other molecules. The core program renders spheres, triangles, and cylinders with specular highlighting, Phong shading, and shadowing using an efficient Z-buffer algorithm.

Ancillary programs process atomic coordinates from Brookhaven PDB files into rendering descriptions for pictures composed of ribbons, space-filling atoms, bonds, ball+stick, etc.

Raster3D can also be used to render pictures composed in Per Kraulis' MOLSCRIPT program in glorious 3D with highlights, shadowing, etc. Output is to pixel image files with 24 bits of color information per pixel.

The program was originally written by David J. Bacon and Wayne F. Anderson; extensions, revisions, modifications, ancillary programs by Mark Israel, Stephen Samuel, Michael Murphy, Albert Berghuis, and Ethan A Merritt

The manual with worked examples is available as hard copy in the core area or as HTML here.

The various programs described in the manual should be in your default path.

Local example files are in /srv/local/raster3d/current/examples/

Please Note: If you publish a figure using this program please cite the following:

Bacon & Anderson (1988) J. Molec. Graphics 6, 219-220 and
Merritt & Murphy (1994) Acta Cryst. D50, 869-873.