Chemistry Visual Intelligence: Anchored Effects, Scientific Maps, and Scene Reconstruction
When you build a figure for a lecture slide, a problem set, or a graphical abstract, the visual cues are part of the chemistry. ChemIllusion's Chemistry Visual Intelligence update brings deterministic, structure-aware visual treatments directly into the Generator workspace: anchored effects, multi-molecule property comparison maps, 2D-to-3D CineMol color transfer, editable SAM-based scene reconstruction, and crisp vector exports across SVG, PDF, Word, and PowerPoint.
When you build a figure for a lecture slide, a problem set, or a graphical abstract, the visual cues are part of the chemistry: a warm halo around a reactive center, a side-by-side map comparing electrophilic aromatic substitution (EAS) directing effects on anisole versus nitrobenzene, or a 3D space-filling model that preserves the exact functional-group colors from your 2D scheme.
Until now, adding those visual layers meant exporting a static image to a general-purpose illustration program—losing the underlying chemical graph the moment you left the editor. If you moved a substituent or resized the figure, every highlight, callout, and gradient had to be redrawn by hand. ChemIllusion's Chemistry Visual Intelligence update brings deterministic, structure-aware visual treatments directly into the Generator workspace.
1. Anchored effects & colored rings that move with your structure
Once a molecule is on the canvas, the Effects disclosure in the right dock's Molecules pane (under Edit) lets you attach non-destructive SVG visual treatments—Heat, Light (bulb), Light (bolt), Vibration, Catalyst, and Halo—and fill aromatic or aliphatic rings with Translucent, Hatched, or Dotted patterns in Blue, Gold, or Neutral.
Because each effect and ring fill is anchored to the chemical graph (by stable fragment, ring, atom, and bond references) rather than pasted at fixed pixel coordinates, it automatically tracks the structure when you pan, zoom, or drag the molecule. You can also toggle Chemistry only at any time to hide decorative layers without deleting them.
2. Multi-molecule comparison maps with a shared legend
Comparing two or more molecules on a slide only works if the visual encoding means the same thing on every structure. In Molecules → Analyze → Compare, ChemIllusion computes chemistry-aware regions across your selected molecules and pairs them with an on-canvas legend:
- Shared scaffold (MCS) — RDKit maximum common substructure (rdFMCS) mapped across all structures on the canvas.
- Reactive sites — nucleophilic (blue) and electrophilic (gold) sites identified from RDKit-validated resonance contributors.
- EAS directing — deterministic rule-based classifier highlighting ortho/para vs. meta favoured ring positions (gold) and the controlling substituent (blue) on substituted benzenes.
3. Carry 2D colors into 3D CineMol renders
When you color a ring or apply a Compare map in 2D, you no longer have to leave those colors behind when rendering a 3D model. Opening the 3D space-filling model (CineMol) preview from Molecules → Analyze → 3D (or Create from molecule → CPK) includes a Carry colors to 3D toggle that maps your 2D ring and region palette directly onto the 3D conformer's heavy atoms and attached hydrogens.
4. Turn any raster figure into editable objects—plus curated apparatus clipart
Need to adapt a static laboratory setup diagram or separate an existing figure into movable layers? Upload any PNG or JPEG to the workspace, select it, and click Split into objects. ChemIllusion segments the image into candidate foreground masks, lets you choose which objects to extract, and inpaints the background cleanly so every piece becomes an independent, movable workspace placement.
For standard organic laboratory glassware, we have also expanded the Objects & clipart library with 12 newly curated, transparent apparatus sketches—including a Liebig condenser, Dean-Stark trap, Buchner funnel, Claisen adapter, distillation head, heating mantle, and Keck clip.
5. Crisp vector exports from canvas to SVG, PDF, Word, and PowerPoint
Every anchored effect, ring fill, compare map, and legend card is composed into a clean, sanitized SVG layer tree on export. In Document → Download, you can export directly to SVG (editable vector) for Inkscape or Illustrator, download a true vector PDF where bonds and atom labels stay razor-sharp at any zoom level, or export Word (.docx) and PowerPoint (.pptx) files with embedded DrawingML svgBlip vectors plus automatic PNG fallback for older readers.
