Making Movies with PyMOL

Everyone can create a movies of a molecule spinning around an axis, but how do you get something more complex?  Scenes are very good for that.

Assemble the view you want, type scene 001, store.  Continue this process with increasing scene numbers until you've got all the views you want to show.  The movie will go from scene to scene and interpolate.

Important settings to get the movie right:

  • set antialias, 5  # for better ray image quality

  • set scene_animation_duration, 5  # the longer the animation, the smoother the movie

  • set ray_trace_frames, on  # to render the individual images

With this in place, go to

  • Movie => Program => Scene Loop => Steady => 1 second each and hit

  • File => Save Movie As => PNG Images ....

Then assemble the individual images with Adobe Premiere or QuickTime 7 Pro.  Encode movie with H.264.