When creating molecular presentations or simulations, one common frustration among researchers and modelers is realizing that the changes in atomic positions — carefully crafted through movements, docking steps, or simulations — are not thoroughly documented or not reproducible when returning to a previous frame. If you’ve ever assembled a perfect sequence of movements only to lose track of how certain atoms traveled through space, you’re not alone.
The Record path animation in SAMSON is designed to address exactly this pain point. By capturing atomic trajectories as a path, it ensures your molecular motion is documented accurately for later playback, export, or analysis. It’s a straightforward yet powerful functionality that can save you significant time during presentation refinement or scientific reporting.
Setting It Up: Adding the Record Path Animation
To begin recording atomic trajectories, you’ll want to add the Record path animation effect from the Animation panel of the Animator. Just double-click the Record path effect; this adds a keyframe at the current frame. As with other animations, you can reposition this keyframe at any point in the presentation timeline.
The key visual cue here is the track segment color:
- Green: Positions have been successfully recorded at this frame.
- Red: No position data recorded or the record has become invalid (due to changes, etc.).
One Key Tip: Animation Order Matters
The Animator executes animations from top to bottom. To make sure that the path records the correct motions of atoms, place the Record path animation after those that influence the atomic positions (like assemble, move, dock, simulate, etc.). This ensures that the movement is already applied when the position is recorded.
Performance Considerations & Recording Control
You can enable or disable recording at any time, which is helpful for performance optimization, particularly during previews. This setting is accessible from the animation’s Inspector, or directly via right-clicking the animation in the Animator and selecting Enable recording.
When disabled, the animation controller appears darkened, giving a visual cue that no recording is taking place. This small feature becomes essential when working on large and complex presentations, helping you avoid unnecessary recomputation.
Exporting the Path for Further Use
Once the presentation has played through and your path recording is fully “green” — that is, all needed positions have been recorded — you can convert the recorded data into a Path node for further use or sharing. This can be done in two ways:
- From the Inspector, click on Create path.
- Right-click on the Record path animation in the Animator and select Create path.
This path can then be reused in additional animations such as Play path or Play reverse path, allowing for efficient iteration and presentation of molecular dynamics.
Why It Matters
When preparing animations for talks, publications, or teaching materials, reproducing complex atomic trajectories or remembering subtle molecule reconfigurations can be daunting without a tracking system. Record path offers a simple, transparent way to bookmark those changes visually and structurally. Whether you’re preparing a molecular docking animation or simulating dynamics over time, recording and exporting these paths ensures better reproducibility and sharing.
Ready to explore more or try it for yourself? Learn more in the documentation.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can get SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net