Creating compelling molecular presentations can be time-consuming, especially when manually adjusting your camera to depict structures from different angles. If you’ve ever tried to record a fly-around of a protein complex or a crystal structure, you know how hard it can be to get that smooth, professional look.
Fortunately, SAMSON offers a simple yet effective feature: the Orbit camera animation. It lets you create clean, continuous orbiting shots around molecular models—with far less effort and more consistency than manual setups.
Why orbit animation is useful
The orbit animation automatically moves the camera around a target point. This is extremely helpful in the following situations:
- Presenting assemblies or supramolecular architectures from all angles
- Highlighting the shape and spatial arrangement of active sites
- Creating engaging clips or loops for documentation or lab websites
Adding the orbit camera animation
To insert the orbit animation, simply follow these steps:
- First, orient your view or camera in the plane you want the camera to rotate around.
- Then, in the Animator, open the Animation panel and double-click the Orbit camera effect.
- Set the desired end frame to control the duration of the animation.
Note: In older versions, this was available via the Animation menu. In the latest version, use the Animation panel in the Animator.
Adjusting target and rotation plane
The orbit camera rotates around a target point—by default, the center of your current view. Depending on whether the grid is turned on or off, the animation uses a different plane of rotation:
- Grid off: rotation occurs through the central horizontal axis of the viewport and the target.
- Grid on: rotation aligns with the orientation of the grid plane.
You can change this behavior by inspecting the animation object and toggling the Keep camera upwards option.
Tuning camera motion
SAMSON lets you fine-tune how the camera moves between frames using the Easing curve. This is ideal when you want uniformly slow movement, acceleration and deceleration, or a cinematic rhythm to your animation.
Interactive control of camera positions
Gain full control of your animations with camera controllers. These appear near the animation keyframes and allow manual adjustment of position and orientation. This way, you’re not locked into a fixed path—experiment with views before rendering.
As you edit, thumbnails pop up at the bottom of the viewport to help you evaluate which frame looks best.
Real-world examples
Want to see what this looks like in practice? Check out these molecular documents on SAMSON Connect:
This feature is especially useful for researchers who routinely generate animations for talks, reports, or educational content. Instead of reinventing every rotation manually, orbit camera saves time while ensuring a consistent visual style.
To learn more, visit the full documentation page.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.