Have you ever looked at a molecular visualization and thought: something feels off? The colors are there, the structure is right, but the image looks… flat. If you’ve experienced this in your molecular modeling workflow, you’re not alone. One often overlooked but impactful rendering effect that solves this problem is ambient occlusion.
Ambient occlusion subtly simulates how light is blocked by complex geometry, which helps your brain decode depth and shape. In molecular visualizations, enabling ambient occlusion means deeper grooves and inside regions of molecules appear slightly darker — just like in real life. This small touch can dramatically improve the clarity and realism of your visuals.
Understanding Ambient Occlusion
In SAMSON, you can choose between two types of ambient occlusion:
- Screen-space ambient occlusion (SSAO): This is a fast, camera-dependent approximation useful for most interactions.
- Object-space ambient occlusion (OSAO): A more accurate but computationally expensive option, ideal for high-quality visual outputs.
If you’re unsure where to begin, start with screen-space ambient occlusion — it offers great depth enhancement with minimal performance impact.
How to Enable It
You can toggle screen-space ambient occlusion on or off quickly through: Visualization > Options.
For finer control, head to Preferences > Rendering > Ambient occlusion, where you can adjust parameters like intensity and radius to fine-tune the visual effect.
Visual Impact
Let’s take a quick look at how this plays out:
Without ambient occlusion — surfaces may look flat, and it can be difficult to perceive what’s in front or behind:
With screen-space ambient occlusion enabled — suddenly the 3D structure comes to life:
Quick Tips for Better Results
- Use ambient occlusion in combination with other effects such as anti-aliasing and depth of field for better overall visual quality.
- When preparing publication images or slides, consider increasing the ambient occlusion intensity for more dramatic depth cues.
- Experiment with both types (SSAO and OSAO) and presets to find a balance between quality and performance.
Conclusion
Ambient occlusion is a small step in setup, but a big leap for clarity. It helps convey the complex shapes and spatial relationships in molecular structures more intuitively — helping both you and your audience grasp key features at a glance.
To explore all rendering effects available in SAMSON, including ambient occlusion, visit the official documentation page.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.