A Better Way to Frame Molecules in Your Animations

When you’re creating molecular animations, getting the right camera movement can be challenging. You may want to create visualizations that rotate elegantly around specific molecular structures or frame the subject from just the right angle. But doing this frame-by-frame can be frustrating and time-consuming, especially when precision and a polished feel are important.

The Orbit camera animation in SAMSON provides a simple way to address this pain point. This built-in animation effect allows users to create smooth camera rotations around a target point—perfect for building engaging presentations, exploring molecular assemblies, or highlighting specific structural features.

What the Orbit Camera Animation Does

Put simply, the Orbit camera animates a rotation around the current target point of the active camera. It’s ideal for when you want to showcase a molecule from all sides without having to manually keyframe the camera path. Just orient your view, apply the effect, and let SAMSON handle the rest.

How to Set It Up

  1. First, adjust the view to lie in the plane you want to rotate the camera around. This initial camera orientation determines the plane of rotation.
  2. Then, in the Animation panel of the Animator, double-click on the Orbit camera animation effect.
  3. Set your desired end frame to define the animation’s duration.

Adding the orbit camera animation

Note: The animation is applied to the active camera by default, but you can change which camera it applies to by inspecting the animation and modifying the Apply to active camera option.

Customizing the Animation Path

You can fine-tune how your camera moves using the animation’s properties:

  • The target point is defined as the current center of the view when the effect is added—but you can adjust it later.
  • The rotation plane depends on whether the grid is active:
    • If the grid is off, the camera orbits around the target in a plane aligned with the screen’s horizontal axis.
    • If the grid is on, the camera movement will be aligned with the grid plane instead.
  • Use the Easing curve property to control interpolation between frames—this allows for more natural acceleration and deceleration of motion.

Animation parameters in the Inspector

Adjusting Target and Orientation

Once the orbit animation is added, you can further refine it using camera controllers. These are visual handles in the viewport that let you reposition the camera’s target point, change its orientation, and clarify its keyframes.

If you don’t immediately see the camera controllers, try zooming out or use the scroll wheel to adjust the view.

Orbit camera controllers

Where This Helps Most

Camera animations are particularly useful in presentations or in visual analysis of structure-function relationships. If you’re creating videos to share with collaborators (or reviewers), a rotating view often makes your content clearer and more engaging. Presentations on SAMSON Connect such as 1AVX – Orbit around assembly show this effect in action.

By letting the software handle the rotation logic, you can focus more on storytelling and less on camera micromanagement.

To learn more, see the full Orbit Camera animation documentation: https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/animations/orbit-camera/

SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can get SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net

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