I am considering making scientific movies for a presentation to scientists who are not familiar with my field, to help them understand the concepts in my introduction and to aid in the explanation of my results.

Are there any software packages dedicated to making scientific movies?

Check BioBlender (http://bioblender.eu/ ). It is a powerful and free molecular animation package.

For protein docking animations

• Chimera (Examples here and tutorials here)
• PyMol (Check out PyMol wiki and a video)
• VMD (Check VMD gallery here and tutorial here)
  

Hi, I am assuming that you mean movies and animations both. So you can use:

1. Macromedia's FLASH (http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/)

2. PowerPoint animations

   • example tutorials:
   • http://www.motifolio.com/tips3.html
   • http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Animation-or-Movies-with-Microsoft-PowerPoint

3. QuickTime animations (http://www.apple.com/QuickTime)

4. GIF( graphics interchange format) animations
   • example: http://makeagif.com/

I am not mentioning three-dimensional (3D) animation programs that require more in-depth computer knowledge and more powerful hardware, as well as added expense.

Resources:

• http://www.xvivo.net/-
• http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/CreatingAnimationsinPowerPoint/192966
• http://www.lifescied.org/content/3/3/181.full
• http://www.lifescied.org/content/5/3/255.full

hope this helps.

Also consider BallView. It is based on the Biochemical Algorithms Library (aka BALL).

Some Examples of movies that can be made.