Molecular Rendering with Medieval and Renaissance Color Theory

This paper describes the application of Medieval and Renaissance color theory to the computer graphic rendering of molecular models. In particular, Alberti’s and Cennini’s color theories were employed to render shaded geometric primitives such as cylinders and spheres that are the components of traditional ball-and-stick and space filling molecular models. These results were compared with standard rendering based on the OpenGL API or through ray tracing. It is found that by implementing Alberti’s and Cennini’s color theories as color maps within a simple chemical illustration program it is possible to create molecular imagery comparable to contemporary computer graphics schemes.