[PyMOL] povray image mapping and default pigments

[Seth H. <se...@gm...>]

This is for the povray gurus out there...

Occasionally I muck around with the time-consuming practice of trying to ma=
p
pictures onto molecular surfaces with povray.

I had this working to some extent, but something has changed (I think with
the povray file format produced by pymol & make_pov where now there are
fancy texture_list texture and pigment statements, rather than simple
"pigment" ones.)

In the past, I set it up so that the povray file has a header (cameras,
lights, etc.) separate from the molecular scene description. Then I would
usually edit the header to apply some #default texture or pigment to use th=
e
povray parlance. So the approach I used to use was to strip out all the
pigment {} statements from the molecular scene descriptor povray input with
a perl script, and then use the #default pigment {image_map{ "
mypicturehere.gif" }} syntax in the header to map the image on to the
surface...the practical uses of having a picture of someone, say,
snowboarding down a mountain mapped onto the surface of some kinase are jus=
t
endless. But that aside, the problem now is that these newer texture_list
statements aren't so amenable to this global pigment removal thing, and I
haven't quite figured out how best to get around this. (Couldn't remove the=
m
entirely and putting in the image_map pigment thing didn't seem to work,
although maybe I just didn't get the right combination of open and closed
brackets {?}}})

Anyone have any experiences along these lines? As near as I can tell, there
was some switch in smooth triangle definitions with Povray 3.5 which was
capitalized on by some pymol 0.98 edition. Perhaps I have to go back to an
old archived version of pymol? Or, more sensibly, perhaps I should recogniz=
e
that pictures of easter bunnies or whatever don't belong on some
wood-textured rendition of a half-submerged albumin, glowing softly in the
warm light(s) of a double sunset over an infinite lake lapping at the shore=
s
of a checkered beach. But for some reason journal editors seem to enjoy
this.

Thanks,
Seth