Creating clear and informative molecular animations can be surprisingly time-consuming. For molecular modelers and presenters, one recurring challenge is how to control the visibility of molecular components across time without making the transitions distracting or unnatural. Whether you’re preparing an educational video or scientific presentation, the way atoms, groups, or even full molecular structures appear in your animation can affect not only how information is perceived, but also how engaging the content feels.
This is where the ‘Show’ animation in SAMSON can help. This animation type is designed to streamline the process of making selected nodes (atoms, molecules, structures, etc.) appear at a specific moment in time during a presentation or animation. The key benefit? It handles visibility without playing with transparency – resulting in clearer and more purposeful transitions.
What does ‘Show’ do, exactly?
In SAMSON, animations are applied to nodes. The ‘Show’ animation causes these nodes to remain hidden until a defined keyframe, at which point they become visible and stay visible until the end keyframe. This makes the animation a convenient combination of the functions handled by the ‘Hidden’ and ‘Shown’ animations individually.
Typical use case: visual storytelling through structure emergence
Suppose you want to emphasize the sequential appearance of different domains in a protein complex. Instead of manually setting up visibility toggles and worrying about synchronization errors, you can:
- Select the nodes (e.g., alpha helices or subunits) that should emerge at a specific time.
- Apply the ‘Show’ effect by double-clicking it from the Animation panel in the Animator.
- Adjust the 3 keyframes: nodes stay hidden before keyframe 2, appear exactly at keyframe 2, and remain shown afterwards.
This method improves control over scene construction and helps modelers focus on storytelling rather than frame-by-frame node visibility manipulation.
Bonus: Fine-tuning with easing curves
To go one step further, you can fine-tune how the appearance transitions feel by modifying the Easing curve. This controls how the speed of the transition accelerates or decelerates, producing smoother results.
Tips to keep in mind
- You can move all three keyframes after adding the animation. This gives you flexibility later if you want to synchronize with other animation effects like ‘Disappear’ or ‘Pulse’.
- If you’re rewatching older tutorials, be aware that the dedicated Animation menu is no longer present in SAMSON. All animation tools are now accessible via the Animation panel in the Animator.
To see the full documentation and demonstration of the ‘Show’ animation, visit the official SAMSON documentation page here.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can get SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.