Find the Animation You Need Without Losing Track of the Rest

When a molecular project contains several animations, finding the one you need can become a small but persistent distraction. A name may be familiar, or an animation may be hidden or visible, but browsing a long list one item at a time slows down the work. SAMSON’s Node Specification Language (NSL) provides a focused way to describe animation nodes using the animation attribute space, abbreviated an.

Start with the right attribute space

The key detail is that an matches only animation nodes. That makes it useful when your goal is to inspect animations specifically, rather than search across every kind of node in a molecular scene. For example, an.n "A" looks for an animation by name, while an.n "L*" uses the documented name pattern shown in the NSL reference.

Animation nodes inherit several attributes from the general node attribute space. In practice, this means you can also describe an animation by whether it is hidden, visible, selected, or marked by a selection or visibility flag.

Useful checks when an animation is hard to find

• an.v matches animations whose visible attribute is true; not an.v expresses the opposite.
• an.h checks the hidden attribute; not an.h checks for animations that are not hidden.
• an.selected checks whether an animation is selected. Unlike the general node attribute, this attribute has no short name in the animation space.
• an.sf false and an.vf false let you check the selection and visibility flags explicitly. The corresponding short names are sf and vf.

These are distinct attributes, so it is useful to choose the one that matches the question you are asking. For example, if you want to check visibility, use visible or visibilityFlag as appropriate rather than assuming they mean the same thing. The reference identifies both attributes but does not define them as interchangeable.

A simple troubleshooting routine

If an animation seems to have disappeared, start with a name-based query such as an.n "A", adapting the quoted text to the animation name you know. Then check its state with an.v, not an.v, an.h, or not an.h. If selection state is relevant, try an.selected or inspect an.sf. This separates two common questions: “Which animation is this?” and “What state is it in?”

Short names can make repeated queries quicker: an for the animation space, n for name, v for visible, h for hidden, sf for selectionFlag, and vf for visibilityFlag. You can also use the full attribute names when they are easier to read or remember.

One useful habit is to keep a query focused. First identify the relevant animation by name or state; then refine your search using another attribute if needed. This makes it easier to understand what each part of an expression is checking, especially when returning to a project after a break.

For the complete attribute table and inheritance details, see the SAMSON animation attributes reference.

Note: SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. Get SAMSON.