When working with complex molecular systems, it’s often important to visually follow dynamic changes while maintaining a consistent viewing perspective. For example, you may want to track the conformational motion of a ligand binding to a protein without rotating or moving the camera itself. In such cases, moving the whole camera can be disorienting and make comparisons across frames more difficult.
That’s where the Look at atoms animation in SAMSON comes in. This feature lets you keep the camera position fixed while adjusting the camera’s target so it continuously points at specific atoms. The result: a clean, stable viewpoint that follows the action, keeping the region of interest always centered.
Why this matters
Let’s say you are analyzing a molecular dynamics simulation of an enzyme catalysis reaction. You want to observe how the active site evolves over time, and you’ve selected the key residues involved. Viewing those atoms from a consistent angle is helpful because slight camera movements can obscure small but meaningful conformational changes. By locking the camera position and allowing only the target (what the camera looks at) to move, you can produce animations that are easier to interpret visually—ideal for presentations or papers.
How it works
The animation is surprisingly simple to set up:
- Select the atoms you want to follow. These atoms will define the center point of your focus.
- Orient the camera to the angle you want for your final animation view.
- In the Animator panel, select your desired start frame then double-click Look at atoms. This will create keyframes where the camera’s look-at point follows the geometric center of the selected atoms between those frames.
- Adjust the end frame to decide how long the animation lasts.
The spatial movement of the camera’s focus point (not its position) causes the scene to appear as if tracking the atoms—while offering a rock-solid visual reference.
Key controls to know
Here are a few helpful tips when fine-tuning your animation:
- Apply to active camera: By default, the animation affects the active camera. You can inspect the animation properties if you need to apply it to a different one.
- Keep camera upwards: If you use the grid view in SAMSON, enabling this option ensures vertical stability throughout the animation.
- Adjusting camera position: While the camera’s look-at point moves, you can still manually change the fixed camera position for framing, and it will remain static throughout.
Visual example
Below is an animation that shows how the camera remains fixed while continuously following a moving group of atoms during a simulation. This makes it easy to compare structural changes without distracting shifts in perspective:
Conclusion
If you’re creating animations to communicate your results or simply analyzing molecular behavior over time, using Look at atoms can help you maintain focus—literally—on the most important regions, without manually adjusting viewpoint at each frame.
To learn more, visit the full documentation for this feature here.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.