When building molecular animations, sometimes showing less tells more. Whether you’re creating instructional visuals, presentations for collaborators, or just cleaning up a complex scene, being able to hide and reveal molecular components precisely between frames is essential. In SAMSON, that’s exactly what the Hidden animation effect enables.
The Hidden animation allows you to seamlessly make nodes disappear and reappear—not by adjusting transparency, but by toggling their visibility. This keeps your scene clean and focused, letting your audience follow the structural changes or interactions that matter most, without distraction.
Why Use Hidden Animations?
Let’s say you’re modeling a protein-ligand docking process and want to emphasize the movement of the ligand into the active site. Using the Hidden animation, you can de-emphasize surrounding solvent molecules during docking, then make them visible later in the animation for a complete view of the molecular environment. This technique simplifies storytelling in molecular design—by showing only what matters at the right time.
How It Works
To apply a Hidden animation in SAMSON:
- Select the nodes you want to hide.
- Double-click on the Hidden animation effect in the Animation panel of the Animator. This sets your begin keyframe at the current animation frame.
- Move the timeline forward and adjust keyframes to control when the selected nodes become invisible.
You can always tweak the keyframes later, so don’t worry if you change your mind about timing.
What Makes It Different?
Unlike transparency-based visual changes, the Hidden animation fully removes nodes from view. This is particularly useful in complex scenes involving multiple molecular systems, electrostatic surfaces, or annotations where transparency might not offer enough visual contrast.
Besides clarity, this method offers more control. With Hidden, you avoid the clutter often caused by semi-transparent visual elements overlapping in scenes. It’s either visible—or not—so you can walk viewers through your process step by step.
Combine for Effect
You can combine the Hidden animation with other animations like Shown, Show, and Flash for richer presentations. For example:
- Use Hidden to fade out environmental molecules.
- Flash to draw attention to a binding site.
- Appear for a “pop-in” effect when reintroducing molecular components.
Fine-Tuning Transitions
SAMSON also supports interpolation of parameters between keyframes. If you want to make the visibility transition smoother or match it with other animated effects, you can edit the Easing curve for your Hidden animation. This lets you control how fast or slow the visibility change happens, offering better pacing and alignment with other elements in your visual story.
Visualizing molecular processes often means focusing attention selectively. With the Hidden animation, molecular modelers can maintain clarity and guide attention throughout motion sequences. Whether you’re modeling a large protein complex or breaking down a step-by-step reaction mechanism, gaining control of visual clutter keeps your presentations understandable and effective.
To learn more about the Hidden animation, visit the official documentation: https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/animations/hidden/
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. Get SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net