Have you ever wanted to create a smooth camera flyby around a molecular structure but felt overwhelmed by animation timelines or manual camera scripting? If you’re a molecular modeler trying to present your system in a visually engaging way—for a presentation, paper, or teaching module—creating a smooth, professional-looking orbit of your molecule shouldn’t require video editing skills.
That’s where the Orbit Camera animation in SAMSON comes in. This built-in animation lets you revolve the camera smoothly around the center of your molecule, highlighting its structure and dynamics in a way that static scenes simply can’t achieve. And best of all: no manual keyframing required.
What is the Orbit Camera animation?
The Orbit Camera animation in SAMSON makes the camera rotate smoothly around its target point—the center of your structure by default. This is perfect for creating intuitive and cinematic looks at the geometry or conformation of your system.
Why it’s useful
- Highlight 3D structure: Perfect for macromolecular assemblies or porous materials
- Draw attention smoothly: The viewer’s eye follows the contour of your structure naturally
- Set and forget: Just set up the camera and let the Orbit effect handle animation
How to get started in just a few clicks
- Orient your system the way you want the orbit to occur. You can do this by manually adjusting the camera view or positioning the grid.
- Open the Animator and double-click on the Orbit camera animation effect in the Animation panel.
- Set the end frame depending on how long you want the animation to be.
Note: Older videos might reference an Animation menu that no longer exists. Now everything’s accessible via the Animator panel.
You stay in control
To customize the motion:
- Target point: This determines what your camera rotates around. By default, it’s the center of view, but you can adjust it manually.
- Rotation plane: Influenced by whether the grid is turned on or off. Turn the grid on to orbit in the grid plane. Turn it off to orbit relative to the screen plane.
- Keep camera upwards: Check or uncheck this option depending on whether you want a stable ‘horizon’ view or not.
- Easing curves: Customize how the animation starts and ends (e.g., smooth in/out or linear).
Edit visually, not numerically
Another great feature is the camera controllers in the viewport. You can drag and update camera positions and see thumbnails that help you choose the best camera angles.
Use in real presentations
Want to see real examples?
With next to no learning curve, the Orbit Camera effect is an accessible yet powerful way to animate your molecules, and it works great whether you’re making educational videos, project debriefs, or social media snippets.
To learn more about Orbit camera animation and its full set of options, visit the original SAMSON documentation page.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. Get SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.