Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access published online on May 3, 2007
Nucleic Acids Research, doi:10.1093/nar/gkm277
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PMG: online generation of high-quality molecular pictures and storyboarded animations
Equipe de Bioinformatique Genomique et Moleculaire, INSERM UMR726, Universite Paris Diderot-Paris 7, case 7113, 2,place Jussieu, 75251 Paris cedex 05, France
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +33 1 44 27 99 25; Fax: 331 43 26 38 30; Email: ludovic.autin{at}ebgm.jussieu.fr
Received January 31, 2007. Revised April 6, 2007. Accepted April 11, 2007.
The Protein Movie Generator (PMG) is an online service able to generate high-quality pictures and animations for which one can then define simple storyboards. The PMG can therefore efficiently illustrate concepts such as molecular motion or formation/dissociation of complexes. Emphasis is put on the simplicity of animation generation. Rendering is achieved using Dino coupled to POV-Ray. In order to produce highly informative images, the PMG includes capabilities of using different molecular representations at the same time to highlight particular molecular features. Moreover, sophisticated rendering concepts including scene definition, as well as modeling light and materials are available. The PMG accepts Protein Data Bank (PDB) files as input, which may include series of models or molecular dynamics trajectories and produces images or movies under various formats. PMG can be accessed at http://bioserv.rpbs.jussieu.fr/PMG.html.