When presenting complex molecular mechanisms or structural transitions, molecular modelers often encounter a recurring problem: how to clearly communicate spatial changes without overwhelming their audience. Whether your goal is to demonstrate a protein’s binding interface or visually highlight subunit relationships, clutter and overlapping structures can make your presentation harder to follow.
This is where SAMSON’s Disassemble animation comes in. It provides a clean and intuitive way to separate molecular components visually—without manually dragging atoms or groups apart.
What Is the Disassemble Animation?
The Disassemble animation in SAMSON automatically moves selected structural nodes or meshes outward from their current positions, creating the visual effect of a molecule breaking apart into its components. This helps you:
- Clarify structural relationships
- Reveal hidden binding sites or pockets
- Transition between detailed views and overall structure
- Produce more engaging educational or research videos
You don’t need to specify target coordinates—the movement vectors are computed automatically, ensuring consistent behavior across different models.
Getting Started: How to Apply the Disassemble Animation
- Select your components. Start by selecting the group of atoms or meshes you want to disassemble. If you don’t select anything, SAMSON will attempt to guess what to apply the animation to.
- Add the animation. Open the Animation panel in the Animator, and double-click on the Disassemble effect.
- Adjust keyframes. SAMSON adds the animation between two keyframes. You can drag these to adjust the timing.
- Adjust amplitude (optional). The system computes this automatically, but if needed, go to the Inspector to fine-tune the amplitude.
Fine-Tuning Your Animation
To increase your control over the look and feel of the movement, try modifying the easing curve—this defines how the movement accelerates and decelerates between keyframes.
More advanced users can combine Disassemble with other animations like Assemble or Move atoms to create cyclic or comparative visualizations.
Example in Action
Here’s how a Disassemble animation looks in SAMSON:
Used cleverly, this tool can also simulate dynamic molecular events such as ligand release or conformational shifts, making it valuable across both research and education.
When to Use Disassemble
The animation is especially useful in the following scenarios:
- Building slides or videos for molecular biology courses
- Creating dynamic posters or figures that show interactions
- Preparing presentations for collaborators with limited modeling experience
- Visualizing protein-ligand docking results or interaction networks
Because everything is keyframe-driven, you retain full control over movement timing, and since no individual atoms are moved manually, your model stays structurally sane throughout the visualization process.
To explore this animation further, visit the official documentation page.
Note: SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can get SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.