When preparing presentations or educational material with molecular models, one common challenge is: How do you clearly show the internal organization of a complex molecular structure?
Whether you’re teaching protein assembly, preparing research visuals for a talk, or simply trying to understand a molecular system better, a key pain point is that structures are often too crowded and compact to visualize what’s inside. This is where the Disassemble animation effect in SAMSON becomes helpful.
What is the Disassemble animation?
The Disassemble effect automatically moves selected structural nodes or meshes away from their current positions, effectively “exploding” the structure into its components. It provides a clear view into a molecule while maintaining spatial coherence. This makes it easier to explain organization, identify substructures, or spotlight interactions and components that would otherwise be hidden.
Here’s an example GIF showing the Disassemble effect in action:
When to Use It
- Presentations: Highlight components by temporarily separating them
- Comparative analysis: Visually isolate domains or chains in proteins for better comparison
- Teaching: Demonstrate assembly principles by reversing them with a disassembly step
How to Set It Up
- Select the structural nodes or meshes you want to disassemble. If you don’t select anything, SAMSON can automatically guess what to apply the animation to.
- Open the Animator and double-click the Disassemble animation from the Animation panel.
- Adjust the keyframes to control when the disassembly begins and ends in your animation timeline.
- If needed, modify the amplitude of the disassembly by inspecting the animation and adjusting parameters in the Inspector.
Tips for Better Results
- You can tweak the easing curve to control the speed and rhythm of the disassembly, making your animation smoother or more dynamic.
- If you set up an Assemble animation first, you can then reverse it with Disassemble to show a complete cycle.
- This works great for showing functional regions in large biomolecular complexes or dissecting supramolecular assemblies.
Even if the original Animation menu is no longer present, you can access all animation tools from within the Animator panel.
Example Use Cases
You can browse presentations using Assemble/Disassemble effects like:
Whether you’re creating animations for research or teaching molecular architecture, the Disassemble animation gives you a practical and visual alternative that’s both quick to use and impactful.
To learn more about how to use Disassemble: visit the full documentation page.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can get SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.