A crowded molecular scene can make one simple question hard to answer: which part is staying in place, and which part is moving away? When you are preparing a presentation or explaining a structural model, manually repositioning components can also make the transition harder to follow. The Undock animation in SAMSON offers a more organized way to show groups of atoms or meshes moving away from their docked positions.
The key to a clear result is deciding what should remain still before you add the animation. In this workflow, the first selected node acts as the static receptor; the other selected nodes are animated. That makes the selection order part of the setup—not just a way to tell SAMSON which objects are involved.
Set up the scene deliberately
Select at least two structural nodes or meshes in your document. Select the receptor first, then the component or components you want to move. If several nodes together make up the receptor, put them in a folder and select that folder first. This gives you a practical way to treat a multi-part receptor as the stationary group.
If nothing is selected, SAMSON will try to guess which nodes the animation should affect. That may be convenient for a quick experiment, but for a presentation where the distinction between stationary and moving parts matters, an explicit selection is easier to check and repeat.
Add the Undock animation
With the intended nodes selected, open the Animation panel in the Animator and double-click the Undock animation effect. The selected nodes will be undocked between the animation’s two keyframes. The final positions are computed automatically away from the docked positions, and the movement amplitude is set automatically when the animation is created.
Once the animation is in place, move its keyframes as needed. This is useful when the separation should happen earlier or later in a presentation: you can adjust when the transition occurs without rebuilding the selection. Preview the result in the context of the rest of your scene so the change is easy to follow.
Fine-tune the motion
If the automatically chosen movement is not right for your scene, inspect the animation and change its amplitude in the Inspector. You can also adjust how parameters interpolate between frames by modifying the easing curve. These controls help you tune the visual transition to suit the timing and style of your presentation.
A helpful review checklist is:
- Is the receptor the first selected node? Confirm this before creating the animation.
- Are all moving components included? Check that the other selected nodes or meshes are the ones you intend to animate.
- Does the timing read clearly? Move the keyframes if the transition needs to happen at a different point.
- Is the separation visually appropriate? Inspect the animation and adjust its amplitude if needed.
- Does the motion fit the presentation? Review the easing curve and the animation in the full scene.
One important distinction: Undock is an animation for showing a change in position. The documented behavior describes an automatically computed movement away from docked positions; it does not, by itself, describe a physical dissociation pathway or its energetics. Use it to make the intended visual story clearer, and keep any scientific interpretation grounded in your underlying model and analysis.
For setup details and related animation options, see the Undock documentation.
Note: SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. Get SAMSON at samson-connect.net.