> A while ago I asked about the prospect for volume rendering (and 
> better-scalable rendering in Avogadro in general). I was told there was a VTK 
> integration in the works, but I haven't heard about it since then.
> Also, VTK has pretty awful support for volume rendering -- it really wasn't 
> designed for that.

Well, I think Marcus will have some thoughts on that. VTK now has GPU-rendered 
volume rendering. He's also been thinking for a while about better scaling 
rendering, which I think would be delivered in an Avogadro 2.0 effort once we 
get 1.1/1.2 out the door this summer and fall.

> So far I've been using my own custom tool, an interactive direct volume 
> renderer that supports large-scale ball and stick vis. Some examples are here:
> http://www.mcs.anl.gov/~knoll/supersoot/supersoot_bas9.png
> http://www.mcs.anl.gov/~knoll/supersoot/supersoot_bas7.png

Well, I'd personally love to have non-VTK  volumetric rendering.

> My motivation: my users (and myself) love the Avogadro interface and would 
> like to use it if possible.

Great to hear!

> What would be involved in modifying Avogadro to support an interactive GPU 
> raycasting rendering backend? I understand this may not replace rasterization 
> outright (for backwards compatibility and speed reasons), but for a lot of 
> visualization this would be a huge improvement.

Well, there is already a GLSL extension when available, and much can be done 
with this -- personally, I've been concentrating on building/editing tools so a 

Beyond that, you'd probably need to start on a new Painter class. We've tried 
to isolate real rendering calls into this class, so the Pov-Ray or other export 
methods use custom Painters.

-Geoff
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