Quickstart
Molstudio is a single HTML file and a material atlas. There is nothing to install and no account to make — the fastest way in is the hosted studio; the second fastest is one line of Python.
01 · Quickstart
Hosted
Open the studio in a WebGL 2 browser. It boots into a demo project — the EGFR kinase domain with erlotinib bound (PDB 1M17).
Local
Clone the repo and serve it over HTTP — required so the local material atlas can load — then open localhost:4173.
02 · The workspace
The studio is arranged like an editing suite around a central viewport:
- Left · BiologyThe deposited assembly as a tree — entities, chains, binding sites, helices, strands, ligands, waters — plus saved selections. Every node can be shown, hidden, or selected.
- Right · StyleRepresentations (cartoon, molecular surface, sticks, ball, space) layered per selection, materials, lights, and the image pipeline — traced shadows, occlusion, glossy reflection, tone mapping.
- Right · AnimateMotion Lab — components, behaviour stacks, and relationships. See the Motion Lab guide.
- Right · ScienceThe source entry and scientific annotations, each carrying a provenance label. Citations export with the project.
- Bottom · ShotsThe shot dock and timeline. Shots hold a camera move, duration, and subtitle; keyframed properties appear as tracks. Space plays and pauses; K keys the selected property.
Your work is saved in a client-side project document. Deposited atom coordinates are never modified.
03 · First component
- Select. Pick anything in the Biology tree or save a selection — protein domains, ligands, DNA strands, waters, or a custom residue query can all be components.
- Compose. In Animate → Motion Lab, create a component from the selection, then stack behaviours: rotate, oscillate, translate, path, ratchet, drift, breathing. Pivots and axes can be selection-derived or free.
- Direct. Repeat behaviours in phased cycles, generate time-offset copies, and attach components to other moving components. Frame it in a shot and press play.
04 · Render & export
The live viewport uses a responsive screen-space preview and short idle refinement. Explicit final renders can add opt-in ray-traced shadows, ambient visibility, indirect light, and glossy reflection pass by pass. Grade with AgX or ACES, shape the frame with depth of field, bloom, and fog, and export stills far larger than the screen with tiled rendering.
05 · The material atlas
Surface detail comes from a packed 2K PBR atlas — protein, membrane, ceramic, and machined-metal families — projected in world space, no UVs required. Channels: R height · G roughness · B albedo · A cavity. To rebuild it from the source scans: