Depth cue / fog color?

thor.lucas · June 28, 2025, 12:50am

Hello,

The “fog” based depth cue seems to only darken further atoms. However, this only looks good if the background is black. On a white background, the fog should be white. Mercury seems to do this pretty decently, but Avogadro’s layering capabilities are much better.

Is there any way to change the fog color?

Thanks,

ghutchis · June 28, 2025, 1:27am

It should depend on the background color. Do I have that correct @perminder-17 ?

Wouldn’t be too hard to add a color setting though.

thor.lucas · June 28, 2025, 2:27am

IT seems like it doesn’t depend on the background though.

perminder-17 · June 28, 2025, 6:36am

github.com/OpenChemistry/avogadrolibs

avogadro/rendering/solidpipeline.cpp

157c9150c


      
          d->firstStageShaders.setUniformValue("fogR", (m_backgroundColor[0]) / 255.0f);
          d->firstStageShaders.setUniformValue("fogG", (m_backgroundColor[1]) / 255.0f);
          d->firstStageShaders.setUniformValue("fogB", (m_backgroundColor[2]) / 255.0f);

It looks like we already sets the fog color to background color. The last time I tested, it was working correctly. If it’s still an issue, I could look up to it this weekend.
Sorry for the inconvenience.

thor.lucas · June 28, 2025, 12:34pm

No worries man! I am trying to update my paper’s figures as per a reviewer request. Avogadro has a lot more power than the free CCDC Mercury, but this one thing is limiting me from using it.

I am on macOS, version 1.100.0.

thor.lucas · June 28, 2025, 12:49pm

Oh shoot! It’s a bug! Looks like if you set background color first, and then set up the fog, the fog will be black. However, if you then set the background color to white again, then it will change the fog! Thank you!

thor.lucas · June 28, 2025, 12:51pm

Example test molecule, set up BG color first, then set the fog:

thor.lucas · June 28, 2025, 12:52pm

Then if bg color is set again, we get:

ghutchis · June 28, 2025, 3:18pm

Okay, that helps. Seems as if the background color isn’t sent to the fog shader from the beginning (but is after setting it in the dialog).

ghutchis · June 28, 2025, 4:31pm

That was an easy fix…

github.com/OpenChemistry/avogadroapp

Fix bug with fog not starting with the correct background color

master ← ghutchis:fix-fog-background-color

opened 04:31PM - 28 Jun 25 UTC

ghutchis

+4 -0

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