Molecular modelers often generate complex trajectories—whether from structural transitions, docking analyses or dynamics—but presenting these transitions clearly can be difficult. Communicating results, sharing insights with colleagues, or documenting a simulation’s progress often demands more than static images.
This is where the Play path animation in SAMSON offers a practical solution. Whether you’re cycling through conformations or visualizing molecular movement between two frames, animating a trajectory can create an intuitive and effective visual story of your data.
When and Why to Use the Play Path Animation
If you’ve used molecular dynamics or morphing techniques to generate motion paths, you’re familiar with the concept of a trajectory—a sequence of structural conformations. These are usually stored in what SAMSON calls a Path node.
Instead of toggling through configurations manually or stitching screenshots together, the Play path animation allows you to animate the entire trajectory across keyframes in the timeline. This becomes especially useful to:
- Visually explore conformational changes
- Highlight different computational results during presentations
- Prepare animations for communication, publication, or teaching
How to Get Started
- Select the path node that you want to animate. If multiple paths are selected, they will be played in sync.
- Open the Animation panel inside the Animator.
- Double-click the Play path animation to add it to your timeline.
- Adjust the start and end keyframes to define the timing of the animation.
Smoothing vs. Precision
By default, SAMSON will smooth the trajectory if the number of frames in the animation and the path don’t match. This helps produce fluid visual transitions, but sometimes, you want to preserve the precise steps in your original simulation. In that case, you can disable smoothing in the Inspector to retain the exact structure for each frame.
Fine-Tuning the Animation with Easing Curves
Animations are not always linear—sometimes you want motions to start slowly and accelerate, or the reverse. SAMSON allows you to customize the Easing curve of the Play path animation, letting you control how interpolation is applied between frames.
Tips and Reminders
- You can move the animation’s keyframes at any time to adjust the duration or overlap multiple animations.
- Use multiple synchronized paths to compare transitions in different molecules or domains in the same scene.
- Export animations as videos to include in reports or presentations.
Whether you’re new to animation or just need a more intuitive way to present your simulation results, the Play path animation offers a lightweight yet powerful approach to visualizing molecular motion.
To learn more, visit the original documentation page: https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/animations/play-path/
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.