Simmerblau lets you generate pleasing color ramps in VMD. It is inspired by and based on the fantastic RampenSau and the Colorinator module in PECOC. To learn about the technical details behind the color generation, please look at those projects. Simmerblau is simply a Tcl port of the color generation techniques with a user interface for VMD.
To install simmerblau, download the repository and execute the vmd_install.tcl script.
# Download simmerblau to a location of your choice. For example, by cloning the repository.
git clone https://github.com/ma3ke/simmerblau
cd simmerblau
# Run the installation script.
vmd -e vmd_install.tclThe installer registers the plugin at the bottom of your .vmdrc or vmd.rc on Windows (do people
actually do that???) and will load it immediately into the current session. After installation, you
can run VMD anywhere and find simmerblau under Extensions > Visualization > Simmerblau Colors.
With simmerblau, you can set both the Color scale and Color IDs 0–32 (excluding the Color ID used for the background color).
By ticking the Live preview box, all changes to the palette are immediately applied to VMD's state.
Individual Color ID values can be locked by clicking on a color in the discrete palette preview (left side of the vertical color bar). This will lock that specific slot, pinning certain colors while randomizing or adjusting the rest of the parameters.
Simmerblau was developed by Marieke Westendorp & Aster Kovács, 2026. The color generation is based on RampenSau by David Aerne (@meodai) et al. and Colorinator in the PECOC project by Tsjerk A. Wassenaar.
Wassenaar, T.A. (2024). A New Look at Correlations: Pattern-Encoded Color-Ordered Correlation (PECOC) and Cello Plots for Multivariate Data Visualization. https://github.com/Tsjerk/cello