July 27, 2005
This extension writes out msms molecular surfaces, volume viewer contour surfaces and multiscale surfaces in Wavefront OBJ format. Only displayed surfaces are written out. OBJ output is written using menu entry:
Tools / Utilities / Export Surfaces in Wavefront OBJ format
You specify the path for the OBJ file. A second file containing the colors is also written. The name of this material file is obtained by stripping .obj, .OBJ, or .Obj from the obj file name and adding .mtl (or .MTL or .Mtl). Vertex positions and normals are written.
Per vertex colors not output. Chimera surface models can have a different color at every surface vertex. This extension does not output these "per vertex" colors. Only a single color is output per surface component. I did not have adequate documentation for Wavefront OBJ format to include per vertex colors.
Relative positions of surfaces not output. Each surface model is output using the data coordinates. Any rotation or translation made in Chimera is not written out. This means that the relative positions of different surface models will not be preserved in the output.
Entire surfaces are output. Even if just part of surface is displayed, the whole surface is exported.