When presenting molecular systems to colleagues or preparing educational videos, smoothly guiding the viewer’s attention from one region to another can make a big difference. Simply rotating or zooming the camera manually often results in inconsistent motion that distracts rather than informs. This is a common pain point for anyone visualizing molecular structures in 3D.
The Dolly camera animation in SAMSON addresses this issue by providing precise control over both the camera position and its target point across a sequence of frames. The result is a clean dolly effect that helps emphasize regions of interest in a system—ideal for storytelling in scientific visualization.
What is Dolly Camera Motion?
Unlike basic zooms, which move the camera and keep the target static, a dolly animation moves both the camera and its focus point. This allows you to zoom in or out while also changing the area of the system you’re focusing on. It’s especially useful when using rendering effects such as Fog or Depth-of-field that are sensitive to the camera’s target point.
When to Use It
Use Dolly camera animations when:
- You want to highlight a specific part of a protein or complex system
- The visual emphasis shifts from one active site to another
- You’re creating polished molecular animations for presentations or publications
- You need to combine zooming with target transitions for enhanced clarity
Setting Up a Dolly Camera Animation
- In the Animator’s Track view, choose the start frame.
- Use standard controls to orient the camera and view as desired.
- In the Animation panel, double-click Dolly camera.
- Define the end frame and adjust the new camera position and target point.
- The dolly effect will be applied between the start and end frames.
Adjusting for Precision
For fine-tuning the camera’s behavior:
- Inspect the animation to toggle the Apply to active camera option.
- Enable or disable Keep camera upwards to adjust how the grid affects movement.
- Modify the Easing curve to control interpolation style (e.g., linear, ease-in-out).
These options help adapt the dolly motion to different systems—whether your scene needs a rigid scientific style or a more organic cinematic story flow.
Controlling the Camera’s Path
The start and end camera positions can be adjusted interactively through the animation controllers. This makes it easy to experiment with alternate visual paths and polish the flow without restarting your setup. You can refer to the Adjusting camera positions section in the documentation for more details.
In practice, the Dolly camera animation is a simple but powerful tool in SAMSON’s visualization toolkit. It gives molecular modelers more expressive control when showing dynamic processes or spatial relationships between key structural elements.
Learn more in the official documentation here: https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/animations/dolly-camera/
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.