README.md

Molgif

Molgif is an easy-to-use tool for creating GIF animations of molecules. Thanks to the widespread support of GIF file format, animations can be easily embedded into presentations, websites, wikipedia, and so forth.

Installation

Molgif works on Linux, BSD, OSX, Windows operating systems. Molgif requires Go version 1.5 or later. To download and compile the code, issue:

go get github.com/ilyak/molgif

Molgif has no external dependencies and uses only Go standard library. Animation rendering is performed using ray-tracing. Rendering is done in parallel using multiple CPUs available on the system.

Usage

List of available command-line flags with documentation can be obtained with molgif -help:

-X            rotate along x axis in reverse
-Y            rotate along y axis in reverse
-Z            rotate along z axis in reverse
-a float      atom size (default 0.4)
-b uint       background color blue component
-d float      bond size (default 0.2)
-e string     cpu profiling data file name
-g uint       background color green component
-h int        output image height (default 256)
-l            hide molgif banner
-o string     output file name
-p            render image in png format
-r uint       background color red component
-t int        animation loop time in seconds (default 3)
-w int        output image width (default 256)
-x            rotate along x axis
-y            rotate along y axis
-z            rotate along z axis

Samples

Below is a list of sample animations along with the molgif command used to create them.

Caffeine molecule

molgif caffeine.xyz

Benzene molecule

molgif -X -a 0.2 benzene.xyz

Carbon nanotube

molgif -w 500 -t 5 nanotube.xyz

Water cluster

molgif -Y -t 5 -r 80 -g 80 -b 80 water.xyz

TNT molecule

molgif -r 220 -g 220 tnt.xyz

Fullerene molecule

molgif -Y -t 8 -g 100 -b 100 -a 0.3 fullerene.xyz

Adenine and Guanine nucleobases

molgif -t 8 adenine.xyz
molgif -t 4 guanine.xyz