If you’re a molecular modeler preparing visual materials for teaching, a research presentation, or a publication, you’ve likely struggled to clearly communicate the internal architecture of complex molecular assemblies. It’s common to want to highlight specific subunits or depict how structures come apart — but generating a visually compelling, informative animation manually can quickly become time-consuming and tedious.
The Disassemble animation in SAMSON offers a simple solution to this. It provides a way to automatically move selected atoms, groups, or meshes away from their original positions, offering a clean and visually descriptive disassembly view of your molecular system. This feature can help unpack complex structures for viewers and reveal internal components, all while saving significant effort on manually configuring such visual effects.
How it works
Once you’ve selected the part of the molecule or mesh that you want to disassemble — say, a protein domain or a ligand — simply apply the Disassemble animation from the Animation panel in the Animator. SAMSON will automatically compute sensible final positions for the selected objects, moving them apart relative to their current configuration. This kind of automated movement is especially useful when time is limited or when you’re exploring various visualizations iteratively.
The movement happens between two keyframes by default. These keyframes can be moved along the timeline to control the duration and timing of the disassembly in your final animation.
Tuning the effect
The initial amplitude of disassembly is calculated by SAMSON upon creating the animation, but you can adjust this manually within the Inspector if you want to make the separation more or less dramatic.
Furthermore, animation transitions are controlled by easing curves. Modifying these curves allows you to make animations accelerate, decelerate, or follow more complex motion profiles, helping to communicate your message with more sensitivity and precision.
Typical use cases
- Visualizing the separation of subunits in a protein complex
- Demonstrating the removal of a ligand from a binding site
- Clarifying the spatial relationships of internal components
This animation can be a valuable pedagogical tool: for example, showing students how a protein complex is organized or how a molecular machine is built. It also brings clarity to research presentations, helping viewers grasp structural insights at a glance.
See it in action
You can always adjust keyframes later, and thanks to the live preview system in the Animator, it’s easy to fine-tune your animations dynamically.
Learn more about the Disassemble animation in the full documentation.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.