Have you ever spent time carefully adjusting the viewpoint of your molecular system in SAMSON, only to find it suddenly shift when playbacks or exports begin? If you’re working on an animation or presentation and your camera unexpectedly changes position mid-sequence, you’re not alone. Fortunately, SAMSON provides a simple but effective solution: the Hold camera animation.
The issue often arises when you’re mixing different kinds of animations or editing a document with multiple users or sessions. Even if you don’t apply a camera animation explicitly at every frame, SAMSON might interpolate the view between camera animations or remember altered positions. This can be frustrating, especially if you’re trying to maintain a consistent visual narrative in your molecular animations.
What Does ‘Hold Camera’ Do?
The Hold camera animation allows you to “lock in” a specific viewpoint of your molecular system between two animation frames. This ensures the camera parameters—like position, orientation, and zoom—remain fixed for a period of time in your animation timeline. This approach avoids unintentional view changes and gives you total control over how your system is visually represented.
When to Use It
Use the Hold camera animation when:
- You want to anchor the camera in a particular location while other parts of the system animate.
- Your scene includes no other camera animations at certain frames, and you want the view to stay constant.
- You are preparing segments of a movie where consistent framing is essential—such as zooming in on an interaction, then explaining it.
How to Apply ‘Hold Camera’
- Go to the Animator’s Track view and select your start frame.
- Adjust your camera by rotating, zooming, and panning until you’re satisfied with the view.
- In the Animation panel, find and double-click on Hold camera.
- Set your end frame to define how long you want this camera position to be frozen in the animation timeline.
Tip: You can always edit the start and end frames later if your animation timing changes.
Visual Example
This short animation demonstrates how the Hold camera function maintains the exact view between frames, while other elements can still be animated freely:
Best Practices
If you’re working on a complex animation with several scene transitions or molecule rearrangements, sprinkle ‘Hold camera’ animations throughout your project to maintain control. This way, the visual coherence of your scientific story is preserved, and viewers won’t get distracted by sudden or unintended camera motions.
And if you’re coming from older versions of SAMSON where camera controls were located in the Animation menu, note that everything is now done through the Animator panel accessible via the interface or by using keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl + 7 (Windows/Linux) or Cmd + 7 (macOS).
To learn more and see further examples, consult the full documentation at https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/animations/hold-camera/.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.