VMD currently has no provision for making a raster image file (like a GIF, TIFF, or RGB) directly, other than using an external program to do a screen capture. In many cases it is sufficient to use the SGI program snapshot to get the image from the screen. This saves the image to an RGB file which can be converted to other formats with the programs /usr/sbin/to* (eg, togif converts RGB files to GIF). Since RGB is the default SGI image format, many other programs can be used to view, edit, and manipulate RGB files.
Sometimes the screen image isn't good enough; you may want a very large, high quality picture, or maybe a picture with shadows. Instead of making these images directly, VMD writes files which can be used as input to several of the more popular ray shading programs. Table 8.1 lists the currently supported formats, and where they may be obtained.
Table 8.1: Supported output rendering formats.