When you’re building compelling molecular presentations or setting up reproducible animations for visual analysis, ensuring smooth and consistent camera motion is essential. Vertical movements in particular can be tricky—especially when you want to maintain orientation while transitioning focus between molecular subunits, binding sites, or structural layers. This is where the Pedestal camera animation in SAMSON becomes indispensable.
Rather than manually shifting both the camera position and its target point—which often results in awkward movements or skewed angles—the Pedestal camera animation automates a balanced vertical translation. Both the camera and its target move up or down in parallel, keeping the relative perspective intact. This feature is particularly useful when examining elongated structures (like membrane proteins or nanotubes), or when needing to stack scenes—from substrate to active site—while keeping the same zoom level and orientation.
Getting Started
The process starts in the Animator’s Track view. Simply orient your view as you’d like it to be for the initial keyframe, then double-click the Pedestal camera effect in the Animation panel. SAMSON will register this as the start of the animation. You then define the end frame, and both the camera and its target point are shifted vertically by an identical distance.
This transformation ensures that the focus of your scene remains consistent through the motion, and eliminates the complexity of coordinating two separate movements. Whether you’re highlighting a vertical axis of a macromolecule or guiding the viewer through stacked structural layers, the experience remains smooth and coherent.
What Makes It Different?
Although similar in principle to the Truck camera—which moves the camera horizontally—the Pedestal camera provides exclusive control in the vertical direction. This kind of spatial control can simplify workflows and saves precious time during reporting or storytelling in research visuals.
Customizing the Motion
If you’re looking for more precise control, further adjustments can be made by inspecting the animation. For example:
- You can disable the default setting that applies the animation to the active camera.
- Enable or disable the Keep camera upwards option to coordinate vertical movement depending on whether the grid is visible—helpful when aiming for anatomical orientation or grid alignment in structural biology models.
- Tweak the Easing curve to control the movement acceleration between keyframes for a more natural or stylized effect.
The combination of these settings provides you with both intuitive default behavior and deep customization when needed.
Limitations and Important Notes
One important limitation is that while you can adjust camera positions for most animations using controls, the Pedestal camera animation restricts certain adjustments to preserve its vertical-only motion design. This ensures the integrity of the smooth up/down translation but is something to be aware of if you’re making fine-tune edits.
To learn more about this feature, visit the official documentation page.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.