If you’ve ever created a scientific animation only to realize your audience isn’t keeping up, you’re not alone. Molecular modelers and scientific presenters know that timing is everything. Whether you’re explaining a complex protein interaction or zooming in on a chemical reaction mechanism in SAMSON, being able to control when your audience sees what can make a major difference in clarity and comprehension.
Enter the Pause animation effect in SAMSON. It’s a quiet but useful tool designed to help you slow down your presentation at key moments without needing to manually control playback. Perfect for giving time to digest the information, discuss with colleagues, or emphasize key molecular conformations.
Why a pause can make or break understanding
Imagine you’re presenting an animation of a drug molecule docking into a receptor. Everything flows smoothly, but the critical binding step flashes by in milliseconds. Before your viewers have processed what just happened, the animation has already moved ahead. This is where the Pause effect becomes invaluable: it lets you stop the timeline at a specific frame, for a customizable number of seconds, giving you and your audience time to focus, explain, or just breathe.
How to add a pause in your animation timeline
Adding a pause is simple in SAMSON’s Animator:
- Open the Animation panel via the Animator.
- Double-click on the Pause animation effect. A keyframe will be automatically placed at the current timeline position.
- You can move the keyframe to a different point in the timeline if needed by dragging it.
Tip: You can always re-order keyframes or adjust their positions to fine-tune the flow of your animation. Even a short pause of 2–3 seconds can noticeably improve your audience’s ability to follow the animation.
Specifying how long to pause
The duration of the pause is fully customizable through the Inspector:
- Select the Pause animation node in the Document view.
- In the Inspector, input the desired duration in seconds.
This single value controls how long the animation will remain perfectly still at that frame. Ideal for giving your audience a closer look at crucial molecular orientations or annotation overlays.
When to use it
Common use cases for the Pause animation include:
- Highlighting a specific residue or fragment interaction.
- Freezing the frame for annotation or verbal explanation during live presentations.
- Allowing time for application states to be captured in screen recordings or screenshots.
In academic communication, clear visuals can be just as important as your data. Small adjustments like a well-timed pause help make your animations not just look good, but communicate better.
To learn more, visit the Pause animation documentation page.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can get SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.