When working with complex molecular models in SAMSON, efficiently navigating large scenes can get overwhelming—especially when multiple cameras are involved for visualization. Luckily, the Node Specification Language (NSL) in SAMSON offers a targeted way to manage camera nodes through well-defined attributes, making model organization and navigation smoother. In this post, we take a closer look at how leveraging camera-related attributes can help you stay focused and productive in your molecular modeling workflows.
Why Care About Camera Attributes?
Imagine you are simulating a biomolecular interaction and you’ve set up various viewpoints in your scene—top-down views, side perspectives, zoom-ins on active centers, and more. Quickly selecting, filtering, or renaming these viewpoints without disrupting your main structure can be invaluable. This is exactly where understanding and using the camera attribute space shines.
The Camera Attribute Space: ca
In the Node Specification Language, the camera attribute space (short name: ca) allows you to operate on camera nodes directly. These nodes represent specific viewpoints within the molecular model scene. You can use this space to access or control attributes such as:
- name (
ca.n): Allows filtering of camera nodes by their name using string matching. - selected (
ca.selected): Checks whether a camera node is selected. - selectionFlag (
ca.sf): A boolean flag that can be used to mark whether a node should be part of selection-based operations.
Use Cases and Examples
Here are a few practical examples molecular modelers might find useful:
1. Filtering Cameras by Name
If you’ve named cameras after the parts they’re observing—for example, “ActiveSite_View” or “LigandBinding”—you can filter them like so:
|
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ca.n "ActiveSite_View" |
Use wildcard characters to match groups:
|
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ca.n "Lig*" |
2. Selecting Only Cameras
To focus your selection on camera nodes only, simply use:
|
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ca.selected |
Or to select everything but the cameras:
|
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not ca.selected |
3. Filtering by Selection Flag
Sometimes it’s useful to only query or work with the camera nodes that are flagged:
|
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ca.sf |
Or exclude them:
|
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ca.sf false |
Why This Matters
As scenes become more detailed or collaborative, manually sifting through multiple cameras can waste valuable time. By incorporating NSL queries for camera nodes into your routine, you simplify scene management and reduce errors—especially during final rendering, presentation, or sharing stages.
A Note on Short Names
Unlike some other attribute spaces in NSL, the selected attribute in camera has no short name alias. You’ll need to use ca.selected explicitly.
Exploring NSL’s camera attribute space is a small investment of time that can pay off significantly in smoother and more effective molecular modeling workflows.
To learn more about camera attributes in NSL, visit the original documentation page here:
https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/nsl/camera/
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can get SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.