Interactive and Innovative Molecular Graphics

QuteMol is an open source (GPL), interactive, high quality molecular visualization system. QuteMol exploits the current GPU capabilites through OpenGL shaders to offers an array of innovative visual effects. QuteMol visualization techniques are aimed at improving clarity and an easier understanding of the 3D shape and structure of large molecules or complex proteins.

QuteMol was developed by Marco Tarini and Paolo Cignoni of the Visual Computing Lab at ISTI - CNR



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See a few screenshots of the visual effects featured in QuteMol.





See a few side to side comparisons between typical (state-of-the-art) molecular space-fill real-time renderings and QuteMol ambient occlusion enhanced renderings.

Remember that QuteMol is citeware: if you use images obtained with it then you should always cite QuteMol, especially in websites, scientific papers, books, manuals, etc. How to cite.

This paper, presented at IEEE 2006 Visualization conference, describes a few of the QuteMol tricks.

Abstract:The paper presents a set of combined techniques to enhance the real-time visualization of simple or complex molecules (up to order of 10^6 of atoms) in space fill mode. [more] The proposed approach includes an innovative technique for efficient computation and storage of an ambient occlusion terms, a small set of GPU accelerated procedural impostors for space-fill and ball-and-stick rendering, and novel edge-cueing techniques. As a result, the user's understanding of the three-dimensional structure under inspection is strongly increased (even for still images), while the rendering still occurs in real time. [hide] [hide]

A quick troubleshooting guide covering the most common problems reported by QuteMol users.