High-quality molecular renderings are more than just accurate representations; they’re also an important tool for communication, teaching, and research. A common challenge? Making molecules look realistic or stylized enough to effectively tell the story behind your data, while avoiding the flat, overly-schematic look that doesn’t engage peers or audiences.
Using SAMSON, researchers and modelers now have access to an integrated Cycles renderer, borrowed from Blender, for producing photorealistic molecular images. But beyond the tracing engine lies a crucial capability: material control.
Why materials matter in molecular visualization
The look and feel of your molecular components—whether they represent ligands, proteins, or surrounding 3D structures—can be dramatically shaped through careful material choices. Want a glowing ligand? Or a metallic protein surface? Making these decisions visually intuitive is essential for conveying the shape, function, or impact of the molecule in question.
How to customize materials in SAMSON
Materials are controlled through the Inspector, a central panel in SAMSON’s interface. There, you’ll find options to adjust specific parameters or quickly apply ready-made appearance presets for a variety of effects. Presets are available for the following categories:
- Metallic: Carbon Steel, Copper, Gold, Silver…
- Semi-metallic: Brass, Epoxy, Pearl…
- Smooth: Plastic, Latex, Polystyrene…
- Rough: Wood, Granite, Velvet…
- Emissive: Glowing, Bright, Intense…
- Transparent: Glass, Water, Ice…
Think of these as “skins” for your molecular structures. Whether you’re building a lecture slide or preparing a figure for publication, these materials let you emphasize key molecular regions using appearance alone.
When you’re ready to go beyond presets, the Inspector lets you manually tweak individual parameters like:
- Roughness
- Metallicity
- Transparency
- Emission strength
Practical ideas you can try
Here are a few examples of how material control can help you:
- Use emissive materials to highlight small molecules like ligands in binding sites.
- Apply transparent glass effects to show internal protein cavities.
- Create dramatic contrast by rendering a background mesh object (e.g., cell environment) with dark metallic textures.
- Experiment with rough textures for realistic surfaces like membranes or receptor scaffolds.
Where to go from here
Whether you’re improving science communication, preparing a publication image, or just making your figures easier to interpret, mastering material choices in SAMSON can be a fundamental step. SAMSON’s integration with Cycles puts interactive, photorealistic rendering within everyone’s reach—and that starts with getting comfortable with textures, roughness, and reflection.
To learn more about how materials work in SAMSON and explore lighting, advanced effects, or how to export images, visit the full documentation at https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/rendering/.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.