Web Analytics Made Easy - Statcounter
Skip to content

Rendering using Cycles#

Use this page when real-time viewport rendering is not enough and you want final-quality images or movies from SAMSON. SAMSON integrates the Cycles renderer, a path-tracing renderer from Blender, for interactive photorealistic rendering inside the viewport.

You can activate Cycles with just one click: Visualization > Trace or click F9.

What this page covers#

This page explains how to prepare a scene for high-quality rendering in SAMSON and when to switch from real-time visualization settings to final rendering settings.

Rendering with Cycles

What you will be able to do afterward#

Before you start#

  • Use Visualizing first if you still need to add visual models, choose visibility, or capture the viewport.
  • Use Colorizing first if the structures or visual models need color schemes.
  • Use Inspecting when you need to edit material, light, or rendering parameters in the Inspector.

See also

Visualizing, Colorizing, Rendering effects.

You can activate Cycles with just one click: Visualization > Trace trace or click F9. Once activated, it begins path tracing and you will immediately see its results in the viewport updating in real time. And it is fully interactive - move a camera, apply visualization or colorization and you will see the changes applied automatically to the rendered image.

Rendering with Cycles

You can control Cycles parameters in the Preferences: Preferences > Cycles.

Check out this short thread that explains in 5 simple steps how to use Cycles in SAMSON to produce fantastic-looking molecular images:

Material Control: Metal, Glass, Emissive and More#

A vital aspect of high-quality rendering is the ability to control materials. With the integrated Cycles Renderer, you can customize a range of materials, from metallic surfaces to glass translucency and even emissive materials that glow. The power to create visually rich and scientifically accurate models is now at your fingertips.

Materials are easily controlled in the Inspector, and Appearance presets make it possible to change the look of your models in just a few clicks.

Apply an appearance preset to a material in the Inspector

The following material categories are available:

  • Metallic: Carbon Fiber, Carbon Steel, Copper, Gold, Paint, Silver, Steel, Zinc
  • Semi-metallic: Brass, Bronze, Epoxy, Pearl, Rust
  • Smooth: Ceramic, Latex, Marble, Paint, Paper, Plastic, Polystyrene, Satin, Shiny plastic
  • Rough: Concrete, Feather, Granite, Velvet, Wood
  • Emissive: Faint, Soft, Glowing, Shining, Bright, Strong, Intense
  • Transparent: Ice, Glass, Jade, Obsidian, Water, Wax

You can further adjust individual parameters of the material in the Inspector.

Material parameters in the Inspector

Below you can see some examples of these materials.

Rendering with Cycles example

Rendering with Cycles example

Rendering with Cycles example

Lights Control#

The Cycles Renderer provides advanced light and shadow controls, letting you set the mood and atmosphere for your renders. Whether it's a soft ambient light to highlight subtle features, powerful lights to accentuate details, or even colored lights, you can do it all.

Rendering with Cycles - lights

To add a light, click Visualization > Light (1). This will add a new light node in your document.

  1. , : Ctrl+Shift+L, : Cmd+Shift+L

Rendering with Cycles - lights

You can add multiple lights at different positions with different parameters (e.g. colors).

Rendering with Cycles - lights

You can modify various parameters of the light using the Inspector:

  • color
  • position
  • power
  • radius

Lights parameters in Inspector

To hide a light node from rendering in the viewport, simply uncheck it in the Document view.

Lights nodes in Document view

You can easily move the lights, see Moving objects and the video below.

Advanced rendering effects#

You can enhance your visual storytelling with special rendering effects like depth of field, which adds a cinematic touch by blurring out-of-focus regions. This can be especially useful for emphasizing focal points in your molecular models or simulations.

Blur with Cycles

Blur with Cycles

You can also modify the background and other rendering effects.

Importing 3D objects#

You can import 3D objects into SAMSON to render them alongside your molecules and create complex scenes. SAMSON supports the following 3D geometry formats:

  • STL
  • OBJ
  • glTF

To import a 3D object, use Home > File > Open... or drag-and-drop a file in SAMSON. When loading a 3D object, you might be asked to specify its size or the size units. 3D geometry is imported in SAMSON as a mesh and you can easily move (see Moving objects) or apply other transformations to it (e.g. scaling). You can also apply materials to meshes and colorize them.

#D objects rendering with Cycles

Save rendered image or animation#

To save a rendered image, you can capture the Viewport:

  • Press F10 to take the viewport capture, the captured image is saved in the folder specified in capture preferences.
  • Press Ctrl/Cmd + F10 to take the viewport capture and choose where to save it.
  • Press Shift+F10 to copy the viewport capture to the clipboard.

You can modify the capture preferences in the Interface > Preferences > Interface > Captures panel (Interface > Preferences).

To render an animation and save it:

  • Switch on the rendering by clicking Visualization > Trace or click F9.
  • Click Export a movie in the Animator.