Anyone who’s ever crafted molecular animations knows the challenge: you want to zoom in on a specific region of a molecule or complex — perhaps a binding site, active site, or ligand-receptor interaction — without affecting your overall scene composition. But doing this while maintaining consistent depth-of-field settings or fog effects is often harder than expected.
This is where SAMSON’s Zoom camera animation becomes a valuable tool. It allows you to generate smooth zoom-in or zoom-out transitions by altering only the camera position, leaving the target point fixed. The result? A clean, focused zoom effect that retains consistency in special effects like fog and depth-of-field.
Why is fixing the target point so important?
Some other animation techniques — like the Dolly camera — change both the camera position and the target point over time. This can be useful for touring through a structure, but it can disrupt visual effects that depend on camera orientation or target-based calculations. In contrast, Zoom camera animations ensure the target of your focus remains static, avoiding unintentional shifts in rendering parameters.
For instance, when you’re applying a fog effect to create visual depth or to better highlight features near the viewer, shifting the target point mid-animation can result in inconsistent fog intensity. Likewise, depth-of-field can blur or sharpen unintended regions. By locking the target, the Zoom animation keeps your focus and rendering intent intact.
Key steps to use Zoom camera in SAMSON
- In the Animator’s Track view, select the start frame.
- Manually adjust the orientation and position of the camera to frame your starting view.
- Double-click on the Zoom camera effect in the Animation panel.
- Set the end frame, and adjust the camera position again to define the zoom level.
Remember: although the animation modifies only camera position, you’re free to adjust both start and end frames afterward. Just select the corresponding keyframes and reposition as needed.
Customization and advanced options
Many users don’t realize how much control they have over the animation behavior:
- You can apply the animation to a different camera by toggling the Apply to active camera setting during inspection.
- Camera movement behavior may change depending on whether the grid view is enabled. If Keep camera upwards is checked, the camera may respect grid orientation (useful when highlighting planar structures such as graphene layers).
- The pace of your zoom can be adjusted using the easing curve settings — allowing for smooth starts, stops, or constant panning.
Visual result example
Who benefits the most?
This technique is particularly useful when preparing presentations or explanatory videos where you want to highlight a molecular feature precisely and predictably. It removes the guesswork from framing your zoom-in shots — and can help you avoid hours of frame-by-frame correction.
No scripting required. No loss of visual fidelity. Just a methodical zoom, exactly where you need it.
To learn more and get started with Zoom camera in your molecular animation workflow, refer to the original documentation here.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON from https://www.samson-connect.net.