When building molecular presentations or animations in SAMSON, there often comes a moment when you wish to record how atoms move—either to show a docking process, a simulation, or a molecular rearrangement. But manually tracking trajectories frame by frame? That’s not scalable.
This is where the Record path animation comes in—and it can help you streamline your workflow dramatically. It solves a common pain point: how to capture and reuse dynamic atom trajectories affecting the structure.
Why record a path?
Imagine you’ve used animations like Dock, Move atoms, or even a full Simulate run to illustrate a molecular event. You play your animation, the atoms move beautifully… and then it’s gone. If you’d like to do something with the resulting trajectories—like export them, replay them, or create related animations—you’ll have to re-do the whole thing or insert complex keyframes manually. But with Record path, the atom trajectories are stored as a path that you can export or replay later in reverse, at different speeds, or alongside other animations.
How it works
You can quickly add the animation by double-clicking the Record path effect in the Animation panel. This inserts a track in your Animator that starts recording atom positions at the current frame.
This track gives you visual feedback: green segments mean atom positions have been recorded successfully, while red segments indicate missing or invalid data. This immediate signal lets you identify whether your trajectory is recorded properly.
Tips for efficient usage
- Make sure the Record path animation is placed after the animations you want to capture. The Animator runs top to bottom, so placement matters.
- You can always move keyframes later if something doesn’t line up.
- For performance reasons, disable path recording when you’re not ready to finalize trajectories. You can toggle this from the Inspector or by right-clicking the animation in the Animator.
Exporting the result
Once the paths are recorded (and the track is fully green), you can extract a standalone Path node into your document. You have two options:
- Click Create path from the animation’s Inspector interface
- Or right-click on the animation in Animator and select Create path
Why it matters
Recording and extracting paths allows you to:
- Use the same trajectory in multiple contexts
- Play back or reverse the motion easily
- Export atom trajectories for analysis
- Visualize complex mechanisms more clearly
Whether you’re preparing a research presentation, making an educational visualization, or just experimenting with atomic movement, this is a handy technique that can save you time and effort.
To learn more about Record path animation in SAMSON, visit the full documentation page here: https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/animations/record-path/
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can get SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.