Sunday, August 14, 2011

Rotating molecules in Powerpoint - part 2


Animation in Powerpoint
One of the most accessed posts on this blog is Rotating molecules in Powerpoint.  I wrote the post more than a year ago, and had I written the post today it would be different thanks to a great free program called Screencast-o-matic.

The screencast above shows how to use Screencast-o-matic to make short movies of rotating molecules and other molecular animation and include them in Powerpoint presentations.

Jmol in Powerpoint
A lot of people end up on this blog by searching for "Jmol in in Powerpoint" or some similar term.  As far as I know it is not possible to embed Jmol in Powerpoint slides.  It is possible in Beamer, as discussed in this post by Janus Eriksen.

Using Screencast-o-matic you of course record any sequence of Jmol animations, but it will not be interactive.  Personally, I make a web page with my Jmol model, with buttons to control what I want to do and simply switch between Powerpoint and a browser.  I give a short example using this Jmol model in the screencast below.