gensurf examples

Note: all the gensurf commands require POVScript+ version 2.0 or later!

NEW! With the interiorcolour and back/frontslab commands, its now easy to slab out parts of molecules and surfaces:

auto molecule cam;
set transparency 0.3, maptype 1;
set linecolour green, interiorcolour yellow;
set frontslab 1.0;
drawsurf surf;


To get started with making surfaces in POVScript+, just issue the gensurf command after reading in a PDB file:

gensurf surf covering atom * plus 5.0;
and just draw the surface:
set maptype 1, mapradius 4.5;
set linecolour white;
drawsurf surf;

input file for the below example


Hrm - that doesn't look too good. Let's smoothen it out by supplying a lambda variable (when present, used for applying a Laplacian filter):

gensurf surf covering atom * plus 5.0 lambda 0.7;


Now we're cooking with gas. What if we want to color the vertices based on the theoretical charge of the nearest residue? Thats easy too - just use the "using" option:

gensurf surf covering atom * plus 5.0 using potential lambda 0.7;
But now we also need to change the "drawsurf" command around a bit, since the colors aren't actually assinged until we tell POVScript+ which atoms to draw the surface around, and we also need to tell POVScript+ what colors to use for the color ramp:
set mapramp from red to blue through white;
drawsurf surf covering atom *;


Oh, what the hell - make it transparent.

set transparency 0.5;

input file for below example


There are a few other options that can be played with, if desired, but this should get you started. See the POVScript+ commands page for all the possible options/commands.

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