Creating animations of molecular structures is not just about aesthetics—it’s a powerful way to communicate behavior, mechanisms, and design insights. But for many molecular modelers, translating molecular motions into effective animations can be time-consuming and unintuitive. One frequent challenge: how do you animate atoms moving smoothly from one position to another, especially when crafting presentations or scientific illustrations?
If you’ve ever struggled with synchronizing spatial transformations over time, keyframe animation offers an elegant and precise solution. In SAMSON, the integrative platform for molecular design, the Move atoms animation lets you add, modify, and remove keyframes to define exactly how atoms should move within your scene.
Why keyframe animation?
Keyframes let you control molecular transformations at specific points in your animation timeline. Instead of manually dragging atoms for each frame, just choose the start and end locations, and let SAMSON interpolate the motion in between. This lets you focus on the intent of the animation—whether that’s showing binding events, mechanical movements, or nanoscale devices in action.
A clear path to motion
Here’s how you can start animating atom movement using keyframes in SAMSON:
- Select the atoms that you want to animate. Use the Selection tools for this step.
- Open the Animator, and in its Animation panel, double-click the Move atoms animation. This adds the starting keyframe.
- Move the timeline to a new frame, reposition the atoms, and a new keyframe will take the change into account. That’s it—you have a motion.
Precise control
Want finer control over how atoms move? You can use SAMSON’s easing curves to choose how the movement is interpolated. Want a quick, snap-to-grid translation? You can set translation and rotation snapping from the Animator as well.
Animations aren’t limited to the “Move atoms” controller either. Prefer using another editor—for example, SAMSON’s Twister? You’re free to disable the built-in animation controller and apply your own transformations using alternative editors. Once you’re done, just add the keyframe again.
Undo, redo, and adjustments
All keyframes are editable—just click and drag them along the timeline. If you need to remove a keyframe, right-click it in the track and select Remove keyframe. It’s a non-destructive approach that gives you full flexibility to tweak animations as your models evolve.
Final tip
Consider animating systems like nanotubes or molecular assemblies across different keyframes to show growth, twisting, docking, and undocking events. These visualizations can be useful not only for analysis but also for storytelling and teaching purposes.
To learn more and explore additional details, check out the original documentation page at https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/animations/move-atoms/.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. Get SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.