Animations can play a crucial role in molecular design when you’re trying to communicate complex behaviors or structural transitions. But if you’ve ever found yourself trying to make parts of your molecular model appear at the right moment in an animation — without fading in or out — you’ve likely run into a common frustration: how to make specific components appear precisely when you need them without relying on transparency or fancy effects.
This is exactly where the Show animation in SAMSON comes in. Instead of gradually revealing nodes with transparency, the Show animation does something much simpler and more predictable: it toggles visibility. If you want to control exactly when a protein subunit, ligand, or even an annotation becomes visible in your scene, this is the tool to reach for.
When to Use the Show Animation
Let’s say you’ve created a timeline of your molecular simulation or design and want different fragments of the molecule to appear step by step as you walk your audience through a story — for example, revealing a ligand only after the receptor is in place, or showing a conformational change occurring in a defined sequence of events.
The Show animation excels in this. It includes three keyframes:
- Keyframe 1 to 2: nodes are hidden
- Keyframe 2: nodes become visible
- Keyframe 2 to 3: nodes remain visible
This is ideal when you need snap-to-appearance behavior, compared to the Appear animation which affects transparency instead. That means Show is perfect if you’re planning to render crisp visuals or create movies where you want the transitions to be immediate and distraction-free.
How to Add It
Here’s how to get started:
- Select the nodes (atoms, molecules, objects) you want to show.
- Open the Animation panel in the Animator.
- Double-click on the Show animation effect.
- Adjust the keyframe timeline so the nodes appear exactly when needed.
Need finer control? Use the Easing curve settings to tweak how timing is interpolated between transitions — even though visibility is binary, this can still help you fine-tune before/after timings in more complex, chained animations.
While the above image comes from an older version of SAMSON where animations were accessed via an Animation Menu, rest assured: all animation functionality is now centralized in the Animator panel (Ctrl+7 or Cmd+7).
Why It Matters
For molecular modelers preparing scientific presentations, teaching videos, or research visualizations, clarity in timing is everything. The Show animation provides a reliable and easy-to-control way to make parts of your model appear when they’re most relevant. If you’re already using the Animator in SAMSON, incorporating Show into your workflow can help you build stronger, clearer narrative animations — without needing to deal with the ambiguity of opacity.
Learn more about the Show animation and explore related options such as Hide, Appear, and Flash.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.