When creating molecular animations or presentations, one of the recurring challenges for modelers is capturing the motion of atoms over time. Whether you’re simulating binding events, assembly steps, or conformational changes, showcasing how atoms move is essential—and being able to re-use that motion afterwards can save hours of manual work.
The Record path animation in SAMSON is designed precisely for this. It lets you record the trajectories of selected atoms across animations, helping you turn dynamic processes into reusable paths. This post explores how and when to use it effectively, especially when paired with animations like Assemble, Dock, Move Atoms, or Simulate.
Why atom paths matter 🧬
Imagine you’re preparing a simulation of a ligand docking process. You refine the movement using the Dock or Move Atoms animations, but when it comes to presentation time—or further working with the resulting path—you find yourself needing to manually reconstruct the steps. That’s not just tedious, it’s error-prone.
Record path solves this by capturing atom positions during your animation—ready to be reused or exported at any point. This is particularly great if you’re iterating on the same mechanism multiple times.
How to record the path
Open the Animator, then double-click on the Record path animation in the Animation panel. A track appears with segments that provide immediate visual feedback:
- Green segments: atoms’ positions have been successfully recorded at this frame.
- Red segments: no positions recorded, or data is invalid.
Tip: Because the Animator executes animations from top to bottom, be sure to place Record path below the other animations that move the atoms. That way, it captures the outcome of their transformations properly.
Performance considerations
If you’re heavily prototyping and performance matters, you can temporarily disable path recording. Right-click the animation in the Animator and uncheck Enable recording, or use the Inspector to toggle this setting. Disabled tracks appear darkened, so you know recording is off.
Exporting the path for reuse
Once the entire path has been recorded (i.e., complete green track), you can extract the path into your document by:
- Clicking Create path in the animation’s Inspector, or
- Right-clicking the animation in the Animator and choosing Create path.
This turns your ephemeral animation into a persistent Path node that can be further analyzed, visualized, or shared.
Whether you’re fine-tuning mechanisms or building molecular storytelling sequences, Record path adds a flexible and intuitive way to capture and reuse your animation data.
To learn more, visit the full documentation page: https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/animations/record-path/
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can get SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.