Apologies if this is not the correct place to ask this. Earlier this year I was using Avogadro2 (v1.98, 1.99, or 1.100 I believe) to render MOs from an ORCA TDDFT calculation, and the rendering looked quite nice for the inclusion in figures. I have since picked this up again for another project and have noticed that the rendering is not the same at all (have attached screenshots to show), and was wondering if anything has changed?
Are there any settings that can be changed in the app, or has the rendering pipeline been changed in subsequent versions? I have downloaded v1.99 and the rendering is the same as the new style, which in my opinion is far too dark.
As I mentioned on GitHub, I think it’s the opacity which affects the lighting. In your top image, you can see that the orbitals are slightly translucent.
If you tap the Surfaces display style, you bring up the options panel. This allows you to change the opacity (and optionally the colors).
I suspect that at some point, you changed the orbitals from slightly translucent (top) to opaque (bottom). Give that a try and see if it changes things for you. My guess is that the top image is ~80% opaque.
In the recent version, there’s now also a wireframe view, which shouldn’t have changed anything, but it’s possible that in the process it reset your options?
I’ve tried what you suggested and it has improved the look somewhat, but I have a feeling something has changed either in the rendering pipeline, or the way that macOS Tahoe displays graphics (apologies if this is a gross simplification).
The colours are much less vibrant (even with a lower opacity, and especially with the yellow and blue), which I find strange. It’s by no means detrimental to anything, but I didn’t know if this change was intended at all, or not.
These images were taken with Ambient Occlusion, Fog, Depth Blur, and Edge Outline all off (turning them on and changing the parameters doesn’t change much). Unfortunately I can’t remember the settings that were used to render the original image.
If it’s behaving as intended then thats fine. Just wanted to check to see if this is the case or not
Not that I’ve noticed on either side. It’s certainly possible, but nothing has changed in regards to colors with the Avogadro code, and I haven’t noticed anything different in Tahoe on my laptop.
But it’s maybe possible the colorspace or gamma have changed without me noticing
