When creating molecular animations, clarity and visual fluency can make or break the message. Whether you’re showcasing ligand binding, structural transitions, or simply guiding your audience through a complex biological environment, how you move the camera matters. But moving the camera smoothly in a specific direction—especially vertically—can be a challenge.
This is where the Pedestal camera animation in SAMSON becomes particularly helpful. It lets you move the camera (both its position and its target point) vertically between two keyframes. The result? A clean vertical translation that keeps your model at the center of attention while shifting the viewpoint upward or downward.
Addressing a Common Pain: The View Drift
If you’ve ever tried to animate a camera to pan up along a DNA helix, polymer backbone, or membrane surface, you may have run into the problem of manual view adjustments causing unintentional drifts and rotations. The Pedestal camera animation solves this risk by keeping the camera’s orientation consistent as it shifts vertically. This is particularly useful when working with elongated biomolecular systems, or when you want to maintain a steady focus on a central motif during a vertical transition.
How It Works
Start by setting the orientation of your camera in the Animator’s Track view. Once you’re happy with the framing, simply double-click Pedestal camera in the Animation panel to insert the effect. The camera’s position and target point will then move upward (or downward) from the start frame to the end frame, maintaining the same vertical offset for both.
You can always adjust the start and end frames later, and the movement will be updated accordingly. This allows you to dynamically time the animation to fit your narration or other transitions.
Fine Control If Needed
Want greater control? You can inspect the animation to:
- Change its target camera (if you’re using multiple cameras)
- Toggle the Keep camera upwards option, which takes into account the presence or absence of a grid
- Choose an easing curve that affects how smoothly the motion accelerates or decelerates
It’s worth noting that adjusting the camera’s target positions manually is more restricted with Pedestal animations compared to other motion types, to preserve that clean vertical shift. However, this design decision helps prevent disorienting perspectives in scientific visualizations.
Here’s what the animation looks like in action:
Conclusion
Vertical movement is a frequently overlooked detail that can add a lot of clarity and elegance to your molecular videos. With the Pedestal camera animation in SAMSON, this process is simple, reproducible, and integrates naturally into your presentation workflow. It’s one of those subtle tools that, once discovered, quickly becomes indispensable.
You can explore the full documentation of the Pedestal camera at this link.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.