The aim of this service is to provide an easy way to generate pictures and movies of protein structures, with the concern of integrating the most frequently used concepts of the molecular graphics fields via the software Dino. High definition pictures and movies are produced via the use of the Megapov engine founded on the Persistance of Vision Ray tracer - POV-Ray engine. This rendering engine is coupled with external programs such as stride (secondary structure determination), or msms (molecular surface calculation).
This service can produce static images as well as movies illustrating macromolecular "docking", molecular dynamics, NMR model diversity and protein motions (from http://molmovdb.mbb.yale.edu/).
First time users of PMG, we strongly advise you to consider the different tutorials present in theses pages. Also consider the following animation Quick-Start.
(clic on the image below to launch PMG)


History/News
By clicking the icon, you will access the PMG RSS feedRSS feed

   - October 2007,17: Release of PMG v2.0, the principal new capabilitie is the use of the yasara engine, and also an update of the formular interface. The tutorial will be update accordingly.
The PMG v1.04 is still available here

   - October 2007,05: new background types, and several bug fix in . Thus, it is now possible to upload your own image for the background, here are several examples:


   - September 2007,04: two new background were developed for the
PMGv2.0 beta, which are : t_shower and t_solvate (see gallery, and list of background). Original scenes comes from rube|vision.
   - August 2007: beta version of PMG v2.0 is online here. This update includes simplification of the interface and addition of an alternative molecular graphism engine: yasara.

   - June 2007: new backgrounds were add : t_rcolumns, t_blood_1 and t_blood_2 (see here the available background in PMG). The t_rcolumns background doesn't work with the complex scenarii.

   - May 2007: v1.04 is online, PMG v1.03 is still available here : PMG3. News in PMG v1.04:
      * the animation grid now permits to define the position of object in the z-plane (rear, center or front)(example).
      * two additional background (ready made scene), coming from http://www.f-lohmueller.de/pov_tut/addon/insert0.htm, see here.

   - May 2007: PMG was published in Nucleic Acids Research, it is available here (advance access paper section), the full citation of PMG is :

Ludovic Autin and Pierre Tufféry, PMG: online generation of high-quality molecular pictures and storyboarded animations,Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access published on May 3, 2007. doi:10.1093/nar/gkm277

   - March 2007: v1.03 is online, PMG v1.02 is still available here : PMG2. News in PMG v1.03:
      * Possibility to add a sub-title file (see here details and example).
      * Improvement of the interface, and of the grid explanation.

   - March 2007: v1.02 dino renderer small bug fix. The dino renderer is now operational but still limited in several options (camera) compared to megapov.

   - February 2007: v1.02 online, improvement of the waiting page (job ranking info, stop rendering and image(s) peview possiblity). The PMG version 1.01 is still available here : PMG1

   - January 2007: camera and lighting facilities added by Ludovic Autin.

   - December 2006: more scenarii and animation facilities by Ludovic Autin.

   - Late November 2006: Full production release, version 1.0. Temporary invalidation of dino only rendering.

   - November 2006: many improvements by Ludovic Autin.

   - October 2006: first implementation by Ludovic Autin and Pierre Tuffery.

   - Late september 2006: proof of concept involving dino, povray.

   - September 2006: First implementation of the "animation grid", mimicking a grid on the scene to position moving objects.

   - June-August 2006: Independant branch from the Protein Picture Generator . Specification on how to define animations from a form.