When preparing molecular animations, a common challenge for modelers is being able to not only display molecular transformations (e.g., docking, conformational changes, molecular motion), but also to preserve these transformations as reproducible trajectories. Whether you’re preparing an educational presentation, documenting a simulation, or simply want to reproduce a visually validated scenario, being able to export atomic paths is very useful.
SAMSON’s Record Path animation provides a straightforward way to track and preserve atomic movements as they unfold during an animation. This blog post focuses on one specific yet important task: exporting the path once it has been recorded. By exporting the path, you basically create a new data object (a path node) inside your SAMSON document that can be viewed, manipulated, or reused across presentations.
When Does Exporting Make Sense?
Many users design animations that involve moving atoms using effects like Move atoms or Simulate. However, if the motion results in a trajectory worth keeping—or analyzing further—it is practical to export this path. It avoids having to replay or reproduce the original animation every time you want to revisit that motion.
Steps for Exporting a Recorded Path
Before exporting, make sure that a Record path animation has been added in the Animator and that the animation track displays as fully green. This green color signals that the atomic positions have been successfully recorded for each frame.
Once fully recorded, you can export the path in one of two ways:
- In the Inspector panel of the animation: click on Create path.
- Or directly in the Animator: Right-click on the Record path animation and select Create path.
This adds a Path node to your document, allowing you to reuse or examine the trajectory independently of the animation effects that generated it. For example, you may later choose to play this path in reverse, analyze its geometry, or combine it with other presentation layers.
Good to Know
Efficiency is important during presentation setup. If you are still building your animation sequence, or if the recorded path won’t change anymore, consider disabling the recording feature to save resources. This can be done via the Inspector or by right-clicking on the animation in the Animator and unchecking Enable recording. When disabled, the animation controller will appear darkened.
Also remember that SAMSON executes animation layers from top to bottom. For accurate recording, make sure Record path is placed below the animations that move atoms.
Wrapping Up
The ability to export recorded paths brings clarity and repeatability to molecular animations. It ensures that valuable molecular movements can be reused, shared, and inspected without relying solely on the original animation framework.
To dive deeper into the Record Path animation in SAMSON, please visit the official documentation: 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.