When communicating complex molecular models, visual clarity is essential. However, modelers often face a recurring challenge: how can you guide an audience’s attention to specific components of a system without completely deleting or permanently altering the structure?
This is especially important when creating scientific animations meant for presentations, tutorials, or publications. You may want to suppress certain molecules, ligands, or residues temporarily while highlighting others—without making permanent changes to the model or resorting to fully transparent representations that can still visually interfere. 🧪
The Hidden animation in SAMSON offers a precise, non-destructive solution. It lets you hide nodes between two keyframes using visibility toggles—not transparency—making it ideal when you want an element to completely disappear from the scene during the animation.
Why Not Transparency?
Using transparency can sometimes still allow elements to catch lighting or interfere with the view through overlays, particularly in dense molecular scenes. The Hidden animation sidesteps this by making selected nodes entirely invisible between frames without changing their properties or structure. This results in a cleaner, distraction-free visualization. 🧼
How to Use the Hidden Animation
Here’s a quick overview of how to apply the Hidden animation in SAMSON:
- Select the nodes you wish to hide in your scene.
- Double-click the Hidden animation effect in the Animation panel available in the Animator.
- The begin keyframe is automatically set at the current frame. You can then move the keyframes as needed to control when the nodes become hidden and when they reappear.
The animation panel gives you total control of timing, and you can repeat, move, or combine with other animation effects such as Shown, Appear, or Pulse for more elaborate visual storytelling.
Flexible Timing with Easing Curves
To deliver a smoother animation, especially when combining Hidden with other effects, you can customize how fast or slow the transition occurs using easing curves. These curves determine how properties are interpolated between frames—allowing you to control whether the hiding effect happens suddenly or gradually.
To adjust, just go to the properties of your animation segment and select your preferred Easing curve.
A Note on the Animation Menu
In some older visual guides or movies, you might see use of an “Animation” dropdown menu. This has been removed in recent versions of SAMSON. Now, all animation tools (including Hidden) can be accessed through the Animation panel found within the Animator.
This animation shows how Hidden and Shown can be used together to alternate visibility between two sets of atoms or molecules—ideal for comparative analysis or staged presentations.
Conclusion
With the Hidden animation, modelers can produce more focused, visually clean molecular scenes, enhancing both pedagogy and presentation. No need to delete parts of your system or use imperfect transparency—just selectively hide and control visibility temporally. 🧬
Learn more about the Hidden animation in the official documentation.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can get SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.