One common challenge in molecular modeling lies in managing large animation datasets. When simulating molecular dynamics or macromolecular interactions, researchers often need quick ways to filter, identify, and control specific animation nodes. Whether you’re streamlining a visualization, preparing a figure, or focusing on just a subset of your data, navigating through dozens—or hundreds—of animation frames manually is time-consuming and error-prone.
This is where SAMSON’s Node Specification Language (NSL) can improve productivity. If you use animations in SAMSON, learning how to use NSL animation attributes can significantly speed up your workflow while enhancing precision and reproducibility.
What are Animation Attributes in NSL?
Animation attributes belong to the animation attribute space, which can be shortened to an. They let you target animation nodes using specific properties such as their name, visibility, selection status, and more. These attributes are inherited from general node attributes but adapted for animation workflows.
Practical Examples from Real-World Scenarios
Let’s say you’ve run a simulation and you’re only interested in a subset of keyframes starting with the name “L”. You can filter these directly using NSL:
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an.n "L*" |
Maybe you want to hide all animation nodes except a few that are currently selected. You can toggle visibility using:
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not an.selected |
…followed by a command to hide those nodes. This is particularly helpful for creating clean visual outputs or focusing your attention during analysis.
List of Useful Attributes
Here are some of the most practical animation attributes:
an.h: Targets whether an animation node is hidden.an.n: Filters nodes by name (use quoted strings).an.selected: Checks whether a node is currently selected.an.sf: The selection flag state.an.vf: The visibility flag state.an.v: Whether the node is visible or not.
Why Use These Attributes?
With these selectors, you can write precise search expressions within complex projects. For example:
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an.vf false and an.n "Snapshot*" |
This lets you find all animation frames starting with “Snapshot” that are not flagged as visible—maybe you want to review or delete them.
If you collaborate regularly or prepare publications, using NSL queries ensures consistency and clarity. Instead of manually adjusting visibility or scrolling through an interface, you can reuse your exact queries across projects or systems.
Inherited Simplicity
All animation-specific attributes mirror the functionality of their counterparts in the general node space, making them easy to learn if you already know NSL. Keep in mind that one exception is selected: unlike in the node space, it does not have a short name like s here.
To learn more and view the original documentation, visit SAMSON NSL Animation Documentation.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.