When working with complex molecular simulations in SAMSON, keeping track of what is visible — and when — is absolutely essential. Whether presenting your work, preparing visualizations for publications, or designing molecular sequences, clarity matters. This is where animation visibility attributes in the Node Specification Language (NSL) can make a big difference.
In SAMSON, molecular modelers can use the animation attribute space (short name: an) to control and query animation nodes specifically. Among the most useful properties you can filter for: visibility. Understanding how visibility works — and how it differs from related flags — can help you fine-tune your view and manipulate animations more efficiently.
Visibility vs. VisibilityFlag
One of the common pain points for modelers is finding that an element looks hidden and not understanding why — especially when toggling between animation states. SAMSON provides two different attributes that help manage this:
visible(short name:v): whether the node actually appears on screen.visibilityFlag(short name:vf): whether the visibility of the node is currently enabled.
You can think of vf as permission to be visible, whereas v shows whether the node is currently rendered. Sometimes a node might be marked as visible but another setting upstream (such as a hidden parent node) prevents it from being shown.
Using the visibility attributes
In practice, here’s how you might use these attributes via NSL queries:
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an.v # Matches animation nodes that are visible not an.v # Matches animation nodes that are not visible an.vf # Matches nodes where visibility flag is enabled an.vf false # Matches nodes where visibility flag is turned off |
This gives you a high level of control when analyzing complex animations. If you’re creating scripts or internal tools, filtering nodes based on an.vf or an.v can help automate visibility toggling or error checking.
Quick Tip: Combining Filters
Let’s say you want to find all animation nodes that are eligible to be shown (visibility flag is true) but are currently not visible. That query looks like:
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an.vf and not an.v |
This is particularly useful when troubleshooting why something isn’t appearing on screen.
Inherited behavior
It’s important to remember that visibility attributes in an are inherited from the node attribute space, which means their logic is consistent across node types. For details you can explore the visibilityFlag documentation and visible documentation in the node context as well.
These tools help you better diagnose, filter, and design your simulations. Next time you’re setting up a series of keyframes or trying to debug that disappearing structure, you’ll know exactly where to look.
To learn more, visit the original documentation on animation attributes in NSL.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can get it at https://www.samson-connect.net.