Visualizing molecular dynamics or conformational changes often means working with complex trajectories. While such motion can reveal critical biological or chemical insights, turning a trajectory into a clear, smooth animation can become a time-consuming task. That’s where SAMSON’s Play path animation comes in—a tool designed to help molecular modelers easily animate paths stored in trajectory data.
Let’s take a closer look at how the Play path animation can simplify and enhance the presentation of a molecular motion, synchronous or otherwise.
When do you need this?
If you’ve used SAMSON to simulate a trajectory—say, a molecular transition between two conformations or a short segment of a dynamics simulation—you’ve already worked with a path node. But explaining what that trajectory means to collaborators, or simply analyzing it visually yourself, may require some form of animation.
The Play path animation turns that static sequence of frames into a dynamic, loopable animation, useful for presentations, teaching demonstrations, or detailed frame-by-frame analysis.
Getting started
To add a Play path animation, first select the path (or multiple paths) you want to animate. Then:
- Open the Animation panel in the Animator.
- Double-click the Play path animation effect.
This automatically creates a transition between two keyframes spanning the entire path. You can move the keyframes to adjust the timing.
Smoothing and syncing multiple paths
By default, if the number of animation frames does not match the number of path frames, SAMSON smooths the animation to create a more continuous visual flow. This is useful for unpredictable or unevenly sampled trajectories, especially those generated computationally. However, if exact frame-by-frame accuracy is important (for example, for direct mapping of MD simulations), you can disable smoothing in the Inspector.
When multiple paths are animated together, SAMSON ensures their motion is synchronized. This is helpful when comparing, for example, different conformational changes of the same system, or when visualizing different molecular entities moving together.
Using easing curves for better control
An added feature is the ability to control the interpolation behavior between keyframes using easing curves. These define how quickly or slowly the motion progresses across time. Try different easing functions to produce different visual effects—like slowing the motion at the beginning or end, or creating a linear playback suitable for quantitative reviews.
Small tip: move your keyframes
Note
You can always move the keyframes of the animation.
This simple tip often gets overlooked: repositioning keyframes in the timeline not only affects the duration but also the pacing of your animation. Whether for synchronization or dramatic effect, it’s worth adjusting these regularly.
To learn more about this feature, visit the full documentation page here.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can get SAMSON from https://www.samson-connect.net.