Creating engaging, informative molecular presentations can be time consuming—especially when you’re trying to smoothly showcase how molecular structures come together. Traditional animations often require manual keyframe positioning or external rendering tools just to achieve a simple assembly effect. That’s where SAMSON’s Assemble animation can quietly save the day.
Whether you’re working on a structural biology presentation, teaching molecular interactions, or just trying to add visual clarity to a simulation, the Assemble animation in SAMSON can help animate molecular structures or meshes as they move from scattered starting positions into their final arrangements—all with a couple of clicks.
What Does the Assemble Animation Do?
The Assemble animation effect makes selected structural nodes or meshes appear as if they are assembling into their current positions. It automatically determines a starting point away from the current locations, and animates the transition between these starting points and the actual positions. The result is a clean, scaffolded construction sequence that can be used to introduce molecular structure, function, or assembly processes.
This kind of animation is particularly useful for:
- Presenting molecular assemblies in an intuitive and visually appealing way
- Explaining structure-function relationships by showing how components come together
- Highlighting specific interactions as each part arrives on the scene
How to Use the Assemble Animation
- Select the nodes or meshes you’d like to animate. If you don’t make a selection, SAMSON will try to guess which nodes the animation should be applied to—it usually does a good job with this.
- Open the Animator and double-click on the Assemble animation effect in the Animation panel.
- Two keyframes are automatically created, and the selected structures will animate to their final positions between them.
At any time, you can adjust the animation:
- Move the keyframes to change the animation timing
- Use the Inspector to change the amplitude of the movement
- Customize the easing curve to control the speed and feel of the transition
Why This Matters
If you’ve ever spent too long trying to create smooth structural animations through manual camera paths or mesh transformations, you’ll appreciate the time savings and clarity this tool offers. The Assemble animation simplifies complex presentations into a few intuitive clicks and slider adjustments. And because it’s based on your actual molecular structure, it’s always accurate to your model.
Examples You Can Explore
Check out these real-world examples that use the Assemble animation:
Integrating animation into molecular modeling doesn’t have to be complicated. With SAMSON’s Assemble animation, clarity and visual impact are just a few steps away.
Learn more about the Assemble animation effect in the full documentation.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. Download SAMSON here.