¶What is UnityMol?
UnityMol is a molecular viewer and prototyping platform, coded in C# with the Unity3D game engine.
It is developed by Marc Baaden’s team at the LBT laboratory at the IBPC institute of CNRS in Paris and has been completely redesigned recently to provide a clean code base and new features.
The VR version of UnityMol is based on the VRTK framework to support HTC Vive and Oculus headsets, Windows Mixed Reality should be supported but is not tested yet.
UnityMol can currently read PDB, mmCIF, GRO, Mol2, XYZ and SDF files, OpenDX potential maps, XTC trajectory files.
UnityMol includes HyperBalls designed to visualize molecular structures using GPU graphics card capabilities based on shaders (GLSL or Cg).
In 2016, we also made the Sweet UnityMol version, which provides molecular visualization with advanced glycan color coding and versatile carbohydrate structure depiction in a user-friendly interface.
The version release 1.0.25 beta was the first public release of the new version with a SMCRA (Structure/Model/Chain/Residue/Atom) data structure supporting to load several molecules, with a python console, a selection language adapted from MDAnalysis, various molecular representations, a modern UI and more.
UnityMol 1.2.0 released in January 2026 brings a more robust and smoother experience for molecular visualization and VR, with improved performance, better defaults, and tighter integration of recent features into a coherent workflow. This release focuses on making interactive exploration, sharing and demonstrators more reliable for both research and teaching, while preparing the ground for the next wave of larger changes.
The project is still actively developed and maintained. The current stable release is version 1.2.0.
User friendliness and available features in UnityMol will be further extended.