POVRayRenderDialog

About POV-Ray Rendering Dialog

This section explains the POV-Ray rendering dialog.

How to Execute the Tool

Execute menu "Render" → "POV-Ray rendering ..." to display the POV-Ray rendering dialog.

Explanation of Each Setting

Below, we explain the meaning of each setting.

Main options

W(idth), H(eight)

Specify the size of the resulting image in pixel units. By default, it's the same as the current screen size.

DPI

Specify the DPI (dots/inch) of the resulting image.

Preset size

Several typical sizes can be selected from the dropdown menu on the right. When selected, values are entered into the width/height/dpi fields on the left.

Projection

You can select Perspective (perspective projection) or Orthographic (orthographic projection).

Stereo

When set to None, no stereo; when set to Right or Left, images for stereoscopic viewing (parallel method) for right and left eyes can be rendered.

Stereo depth

When Stereo is enabled, specify the separation between left and right eyes (= the degree of 3D pop-out). Larger values create more protruding images.

CPU

Specify the number of CPUs that POV-Ray uses for rendering. Since CueMol actually uses 1 CPU, it's good to specify the number of installed CPUs minus 1.

Transp background

Specify whether to make the background color transparent. (However, making it transparent eliminates fog effects. Also, it cannot be made transparent when using radiosity method)

Clipping plane

Specify whether to reproduce clipping by slab currently displayed in the molecular view in POV-ray rendering as well.
Left: Clipping plane off, Right: Clipping plane on

Post-render alpha blending

Specify whether to perform alpha blending after POV-Ray rendering. For details, refer to cuemol2/PostAlphaBlend.

Edge lines

Enable edge rendering. For details, refer to cuemol2/EdgeLines.

Pix labels

Enable rendering of text labels etc.

POV-Ray options

Povray-exe-path

Specify the POV-Ray executable file to use for rendering. For Windows versions, it must be a console-running povray. (See POV-Ray path etc. settings below)

Povray-inc-path

Specify the directory containing inc files that POV-Ray references. (See POV-Ray path etc. settings below)

Radiosity

Specify whether to perform radiosity rendering and its mode. For details, refer to cuemol2/Radiosity.

Lighting

Configure light sources. For details, refer to cuemol2/POVRayRenderLighting.

Shadow

Specify whether to render with shadows. It's off by default.
Left: Shadow off, Right: Shadow on

POV-Ray Path etc. Settings

Among the above settings, we'll explain Povray-exe-path and Povray-inc-path.

Windows

When installing from an installer downloaded from Releases, console povray is included, and these values are set to point to the bundled version, so no special preparation is needed.

macOS

When installing from a dmg file downloaded from Releases, console povray is included, and these values are set to point to the bundled version, so no special preparation is needed.

When Not Bundled

When POV-Ray is not bundled, such as when building yourself, please compile console version POV-Ray yourself from Unix sources. For Windows, since this is somewhat troublesome, we've prepared a compiled version. You can download it here (povray3.6-mingw32.zip).

First, extract the prepared file to an appropriate location (such as the desktop).

Now, assuming CueMol2 is installed in C:\Program Files (x86)\CueMol 2.0, copy the entire povray folder from the above zip file into it. (You may get a dialog saying you need administrator privileges to copy, but click OK and copy anyway.)

C:\Program Files (x86)\CueMol 2.0\povray\povray.exe

should exist, and

C:\Program Files (x86)\CueMol 2.0\povray\include

should be a folder containing various inc and other files. The executable file extracted after download may show a warning dialog when run (Windows 7 etc.). Run it once to make sure the warning dialog doesn't appear.

Starting Rendering and Saving Images

Press the Start button at the bottom to begin rendering.

During rendering, Start changes to a Stop button, so press Stop if you want to interrupt. As rendering progresses, the rendering image is displayed in the preview area.

When rendering is complete:

• Press the Save image... button to save as a PNG image.
• Press the Copy to clipboard button to copy the image to the clipboard for pasting in other software.

Press Close to close the POV-Ray rendering tool.

While the POV-Ray rendering dialog is displayed, you can still operate the main window. If you edit the scene and return to the displayed POV-Ray rendering dialog to render again, the scene reflecting your editing work will be rendered.

(However, if you switch tabs to move to a different scene, you need to close the dialog once and reopen it, or the previous scene will be rendered.)

Rendering Log

From CueMol2.1 onwards, information that POV-Ray writes to stdout (or stderr) during rendering is displayed in the log window (see tutorial). If rendering doesn't work properly, please refer to the log window and provide error reports.