Visualizing motion in molecular systems can be hard, especially when you’re preparing presentations or teaching materials. Rotating molecular groups helps with spatial perception, symmetry analysis, and drawing attention to specific structural features. But creating smooth and precise rotational animations often requires custom scripting or tedious camera adjustments.
SAMSON’s Rotate animation offers a much simpler and faster alternative.
This feature allows you to rotate any selected group of particles around its geometric center (the centroid) with one click. The rotation happens along a vector that goes through that center and is aligned with the global Z-axis. This is ideal for generating appealing molecular movies where the viewer gets a better sense of 3D structure — whether it’s for crystallographic units, protein domains, or nanoscale devices.
Common use cases
- Showing the 3D folding and symmetry of protein domains
- Producing rotation loops for molecules in posters or slides
- Highlighting substructures by isolating and rotating side chains or ligands
- Clarifying spatial relationships that aren’t obvious in static views
Because the rotation is clearly defined by the Z-axis, you get predictable and repeatable results—crucial for consistent visuals over multiple projects or publications.
Step-by-step: Adding a rotation animation
- Select a group of atoms or particles you want to animate. You can use the standard selection tools in SAMSON or refer to the selection documentation.
- Open the Animator and locate the Animation panel.
- Double-click on the
Rotateanimation. This immediately creates a rotation animation between the current keyframes in the timeline. - Drag or reposition keyframes to define when the rotation happens.
Even after the effect is added, you can fine-tune the timing using keyframe adjustments, or control the interpolation speed using easing curves.
Example: Rotating a molecule
Below is an example of a molecular group being rotated around its center. Notice how smooth and clear the spatial perception becomes with a few seconds of rotation.
Things to know
- All animations, including Rotate, are now located in the Animation panel. The old Animation menu previously featured in tutorials is no longer used.
- You can apply multiple different animations to the same molecular group for more complex motions (e.g., rotation + translation).
- Animations are reversible simply by rearranging keyframes, making dynamic back-and-forth loops easy to build.
To explore more about how the Rotate animation works, visit the full Rotate documentation page.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.