When showcasing a molecular mechanism or communicating complex simulations, molecular modelers often face a presentation challenge: keeping control of the narrative. Visualizations can flow too fast, or worse, become overwhelming to the audience without clear segmenting. While traditional media like PowerPoint allow you to present in discrete slides, molecular animations in SAMSON can do even better—with interactivity and real molecular data.
This is where the Stop animation effect in SAMSON comes in. If you’ve ever wished you could divide your animated presentations into clearly defined sections or ‘slides’, this built-in feature lets you do exactly that. In this post, we’ll explore how to use the Stop animation to bring structure to your scientific presentations and maintain audience engagement throughout.
Why use the Stop animation?
Think of the Stop animation not just as a pause, but as a deliberate cue for the audience: “Let’s focus on this step before moving forward.” This is invaluable when teaching, explaining a complex reaction step-by-step, or guiding viewers through a molecular docking sequence. Instead of manually stopping the playback at the right time, you automate it: the animation will stop at a specific keyframe, and resume only when the user presses Space or the Play button.
How to insert a Stop animation
In SAMSON’s Animator interface, follow these steps to insert a Stop animation keyframe:
- Navigate to the Animation panel.
- Double-click on the Stop animation effect from the list.
- The Stop keyframe is inserted at the current position of the animation timeline.
- You can move this keyframe later to adjust exactly when the pause should occur.
This means it’s easy to preview your animation quickly, find the right moment to pause, insert the Stop, and fine-tune it later. You can add multiple Stop effects throughout your animation to structure it into different segments.
Use case: scientific storytelling
Suppose you’re showing a conformational change in a large protein, or explaining the stepwise process of molecular dynamics sampling. Without breaks, your viewers might miss key transitions. With Stop animations, you can:
- Divide the animation into digestible units
- Give yourself or your audience time to explain at each stage
- Reuse the same presentation with different pacing depending on the audience (e.g. colleagues vs. students)
In combination with camera changes, labels, and other animation elements, Stop effects allow you to create a true molecular storyline, one frame at a time.
Integration with Pause animation
For temporary delays that resume automatically, consider using the Pause animation instead. However, if you want a full control point where the animation halts until instructed to continue, Stop is the better choice.
To learn more about the Stop animation effect and how to best incorporate it into your molecular presentations, visit the official SAMSON documentation here.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.