If you’ve ever tried presenting molecular simulations or structural models in SAMSON, you’ve probably encountered a common challenge: how do you effectively break up your animation into clearly structured sequences, kind of like slides in a PowerPoint presentation?
Whether you’re teaching protein folding pathways or showcasing ligand binding interactions, the ability to pause or control the pacing of complex animations can significantly improve clarity and audience understanding. This is where the Stop animation effect in SAMSON becomes extremely useful.
What Does the Stop Animation Do?
In simple terms, the Stop animation halts the animation timeline at a specific frame. This lets you pause the flow of information—just as you might stop to explain a slide in an in-person talk. Your audience gets time to absorb what’s on screen before you move to the next event.
Once the animation is stopped, you can resume playback either by pressing the Space key or clicking the Play button from the Animator’s controls. This interaction feels intuitive and gives presenters complete control over pacing, especially valuable during live demonstrations or lectures.
When Should You Use the Stop Animation?
- 🔬 During complex transitions where molecular states change significantly (e.g. before and after ligand binding).
- 🎓 In educational settings to pause and explain structures, reactions, or conformational changes step-by-step.
- 🎥 To create slide-like sessions with natural breaks embedded in your animation timeline.
How to Add a Stop Animation
To insert a Stop animation:
- Open the Animation panel in the Animator.
- Double-click the Stop animation effect. This automatically places a keyframe at the current frame.
- Want to adjust where the stop occurs? Simply move the keyframe to any other frame using drag and drop.
Tip: Consider combining Stop with other effects like Pause when you need a timed buffer or visual freeze before continuing. Stop puts you in full control, while Pause adds automated timing.
Use Cases Across Molecular Modeling
Imagine you’re animating a pathway model and want to pause after each metabolite’s change. Or perhaps you’re demonstrating different docking poses of a ligand and want to walk through each possible conformation. Rather than recording multiple separate animations or fast-forwarding manually, Stop lets you structure the narrative from one seamless session.
This makes your presentations smoother—and more understandable—for students, peers, and even non-specialists.
To learn more about the Stop animation, visit the full documentation page.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can get SAMSON here.