Creating compelling and clear molecular presentations can be challenging—especially when you need to guide your audience through 3D molecular structures. One frequent pain point among molecular modelers: how to make the camera smoothly move through scenes and align precisely with different viewpoints. Manual camera movement during screen captures or recordings often leads to inconsistent transitions and an unpolished final presentation.
This is where the Move camera animation in SAMSON can help. With it, you can set up fully interpolated camera paths between different viewpoints using keyframes—ideal for flythroughs, docking animations, and educational walkthroughs of molecular complexes.
What Is the “Move Camera” Animation?
The Move camera animation enables free motion of the camera by allowing users to place keyframes at specific frames within the animation timeline. SAMSON then extracts the intermediary camera positions automatically, easing your workflow and producing smooth video transitions.
This means you can define an initial and a final camera view, and SAMSON will take care of smoothly transitioning between them. If you want more complex motion, you can insert intermediate keyframes to fine-tune the camera path
Adding and Managing Keyframes
To use the Move camera animation:
- Orient the camera to your desired starting view within the SAMSON viewport.
- In the Animator’s Track view, go to the timeline frame where this position should be set.
- Double-click the Move camera animation in the Animation panel.
To add an additional keyframe later:
- Re-orient the camera to the new viewpoint.
- Navigate to the desired frame in the Timeline.
- Left-click the animation track or right-click and choose Add keyframe.
You can always adjust keyframe positions within the timeline if you need to speed up or slow down parts of the animation.
Tips for Better Flythroughs
- Keep camera upwards: Enables you to maintain orientation consistency relative to the ground grid.
- Use easing curves: Modify these to control the acceleration and deceleration of camera movement between keyframes.
- Adjust camera parameters manually: This can refine how the camera looks at or rotates around molecular structures between frames.
Visual Example
Below is a sample of the Move camera animation in use. Notice how the motion flows naturally between viewpoints, ideal for high-quality demonstrations:
Use Cases in Public Presentations
Many molecular presentations already leverage the Move camera animation. For example:
These types of animations are helpful for researchers wanting to showcase docking simulations, highlight areas of interest in large biomolecular assemblies, or create dynamic learning materials in biochemistry or drug discovery courses.
By combining the Move camera animation with other effects in the Animator, you can build full-fledged molecular stories directly in SAMSON.
To learn more about camera animations in SAMSON, visit the official Move camera documentation page.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.