Visualizing molecular trajectories or conformational transitions is a core need in molecular modeling. Whether you’re tracking a ligand moving through a tunnel, observing backbone flexibility, or reviewing snapshots of a molecular dynamics simulation, being able to animate the path clearly and smoothly can save you time—and make your results easier to communicate.
This is where the Play path animation in SAMSON becomes useful. It transforms molecular paths into synchronized animations between keyframes. If you’ve ever struggled with manually aligning snapshots or explaining a continuous molecular motion, this feature can help you create seamless, controlled trajectory animations within just a few steps.
How the Play Path animation works
The Play path animation lets you animate one or more paths between two frames in your Animator timeline. In SAMSON, a Path node can represent, for example, a calculated tunnel or a dynamic trajectory. You can choose a single path or multiple paths to play—and if multiple paths are selected, SAMSON automatically synchronizes their motion.
One common frustration during molecular animations is mismatched frame lengths—say, your animation spans 100 keyframes but your path only has 65 frames. This often results in stuttering or abrupt jumps. SAMSON addresses this by smoothing paths automatically so that animations feel continuous. If you need to match individual discreet positions instead (e.g., for exact analysis), you can disable smoothing in the Inspector.
Adding the animation in practice
Here’s a quick walkthrough to get your path-based animation running:
- First, in your model, select the path or paths you’d like to animate.
- Next, double-click on Play path in the Animation panel of the Animator.
- The animation is now added between two keyframes. By default, the entire path is mapped linearly between those keyframes. You can drag the keyframes to adjust the duration of the animation.
Note: If you’ve added multiple animations, each will have its own keyframes, so you can coordinate them precisely.
Control motion smoothness with easing curves
If your animation feels mechanical or too abrupt, try adjusting the easing curve. This lets you control how quickly the animation starts and ends—enabling smoother, more natural transitions. For example, using an ease-in-ease-out curve slows the transition at the start and end, which can be helpful when visualizing diffusive processes or subtle molecular rearrangements.
When you’ll want to use Play path
This feature is helpful in many scenarios, especially when:
- You’ve imported or generated a molecular dynamics trajectory.
- You want to animate a conformational change or reaction pathway.
- You’re presenting ligand migration or molecular transport simulations visually.
- You’ve calculated multiple paths and want to compare them side-by-side.
By making animations easier to generate, more accurate, and customizable, the Play path animation can help communicate complex motions more clearly to both your colleagues and collaborators.
For more details and advanced settings, you can visit the original documentation: https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/animations/play-path/
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can get SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.