In molecular simulation and visualization, it’s common to animate a system over time—watching proteins fold, ligands bind, or large molecular assemblies rearrange themselves. As these events unfold, a typical viewer wants to stay focused on a particular region of interest—perhaps an active site, a ligand, or a specific atom group.
But here’s a common challenge: as your molecules move throughout the animation, the region you’re interested in might drift out of the camera’s central gaze. You end up having to constantly reposition the camera manually, or you risk losing sight of what really matters in your trajectory. This is where SAMSON’s Look at atoms animation effect can help.
Stay Centered Without Moving
The Look at atoms animation lets the camera continuously look at a moving group of atoms, without actually moving the camera itself. Instead, the target point of the camera shifts during the animation to follow the geometric center of the selected atoms. This makes it ideal in situations where you want to keep your current viewpoint steady, but still track the structural changes of the atoms you’re interested in.
Practically, that means you can set up a trajectory—say, a molecular dynamics simulation—and keep the camera’s position unchanged. Viewers won’t feel like the whole scene is moving around; instead, the focus remains logically and visually coherent throughout the frames.
How to Set It Up
Here’s a step-by-step guide:
- Select the group of atoms you want the camera to look at. This could be a residue, a ligand, or any atom subset moving during the animation.
- Orient the camera to the perspective you want to maintain throughout the animation.
- In the Animator’s Track view, pick your start frame.
- From the Animation panel, double-click on the Look at atoms effect.
- Set the end frame to define the length of the animation.
- Optional: adjust properties like whether to apply the effect to the active camera, or whether the camera should maintain an upright orientation, especially if the grid is on.
Even after you create the animation effect, you can still adjust start and end frames easily.
When to Use It
This technique is ideal when:
- You want to maintain visual continuity without camera motion.
- You’re preparing a presentation or video and want to keep the audience’s focus on a moving site.
- You’re debugging a simulation artifact and need to isolate a moving structure while keeping the environment stable.
Rather than simply moving the entire camera, this method provides a subtle but powerful way to maintain clarity when following atomistic trajectories.
To learn more about this animation effect, including how to adjust camera properties and animation parameters, see the full documentation page here:
https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/animations/look-at-atoms/
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON here: https://www.samson-connect.net