What is the most user friendly software for frequency visualization rendering?

Question

I perform my calculations in Q-Chem and would like to make short movies of IR modes. As of now, I render them with IQmol, but I believe graphics properties (colors and resolution) can be much better. Yet, CYLView cannot understand Q-Chem outputs unfortunately.
What visualization software can be used with a variety of atom/bond styles and adjustable resolution?

Answer 1

VMD Normal Mode Wizard

If you're goal is to create high quality visualizations of vibrations I recommend VMD. It's highly customizable in terms of colors, resolution, and representation.

The setup however, is a little bit painful as the normal mode (NMD) input file has to be specially prepared in atomic units and has a special format (see below).

The official details can be found here.

One benefit however, is that the in addition to creating a movie which you can show in your presentation you can create static images like this which show the vibration vector

Here is my "NMD" file which was used in VMD to create this image.

names C C C C H H H H H H C C C C H H H H H H
coordinates 0.419783 -0.742862 0.883452 -0.036356 0.490734 0.325996 0.251234 0.764637 -1.047649 0.039963 -0.211417 -2.131132 0.176898 -0.924957 1.920794 0.324685 -1.620253 0.262458 -0.109550 1.336747 0.988139 0.216590 1.797666 -1.352741 -0.135041 -1.246035 -1.916959 0.240780 0.062286 -3.148909 2.889548 1.383592 2.407869 2.645651 0.115596 2.054427 2.219184 -0.415514 0.727746 2.398198 0.407775 -0.493158 3.167189 1.622583 3.418802 2.857201 2.206403 1.717940 2.728662 -0.638593 2.822578 2.541096 -1.440669 0.600368 2.721145 1.425776 -0.398300 2.693411 -0.087720 -1.397883
mode 0.029 -0.016  0.006 0.018 0.034 -0.077  0.045 0.058 0.153 -0.012  -0.073  -0.082  -0.002  -0.001  0.000 -0.003  -0.001  0.001 0.003 0.001 0.000 -0.015  0.001 0.001 -0.002  0.002 -0.001  0.004 -0.002  0.001 0.000 -0.000  -0.001  0.003 0.000 -0.000  -0.027  -0.016  0.020 -0.050  0.018 -0.021  -0.000  0.000 -0.000  0.000 0.000 -0.000  -0.000  0.000 -0.000  0.004 0.000 0.001 0.004 -0.003  0.001 -0.000  -0.001  -0.002
mode 0.002 0.005 0.003 -0.028  -0.027  0.083 0.138 0.009 -0.050  -0.023  -0.011  -0.013  -0.002  0.001 -0.000  -0.000  0.000 -0.001  -0.003  -0.001  -0.000  -0.003  -0.001  0.001 -0.000  0.000 -0.000  0.001 0.000 0.001 -0.000  0.001 -0.000  -0.000  -0.002  -0.000  0.002 -0.002  0.005 -0.102  0.033 -0.036  0.000 -0.000  0.000 0.000 -0.000  -0.000  0.000 0.000 0.000 -0.000  -0.000  0.001 0.012 -0.003  0.003 0.008 -0.001  0.002

Answer 2

Jmol

The Jmol package is able to do what you want. You can produce the animations below just using point & click with your mouse.

But you can also use its scripting capabilities to work with batch files, and make the process all automatic.

As it is coded in Java, you can used in any operative system.

Here are some examples. Below the results for $CH_4$ ($T_d$ symmetry):

$o_1 = 3025.5\, cm^{-1}$ ($A_1$ Symmetry)

$o_2 = 1582.7\, cm^{-1}$ ($E$ Symmetry)

$o_3 = 3156.8\, cm^{-1}$ ($F_2$ Symmetry)

$o_4 = 1367.4\, cm^{-1}$ ($F_2$ Symmetry)