When a molecular scene contains several animations, it can be surprisingly easy to lose track of which one you are inspecting. A name may be unclear, or you may need to distinguish animations by visibility or selection state. Node Specification Language (NSL) gives you a compact way to describe the animation nodes you want to find, using the animation attribute space and its short prefix, an.
The key idea is scope: animation attributes match animation nodes. So, when you write an.v, the an prefix indicates that the visible attribute is being checked in the animation attribute space. This helps keep your query focused on animations rather than applying the same attribute name across other kinds of nodes.
Start with visibility
If you are trying to identify animations that are visible, the documented expression is an.v. To look for animations that are not visible, use not an.v. These two small expressions are useful starting points when the immediate problem is simply, “Which animations are currently visible?” or “Which ones are not?”
For example, if the animation you expect to inspect is not apparent in your current view, checking the visible and non-visible groups can help narrow down where to look. This is a search strategy, not a claim that the query changes an animation’s state: the expressions describe attributes to match.
Keep visibility and hidden separate
The animation attribute list also includes hidden, abbreviated h. Its examples are an.h and not an.h. Because both hidden and visible are listed, it is useful to choose the attribute that matches the question you are asking. For a visibility-focused search, use an.v or not an.v; for a hidden-focused search, use an.h or not an.h.
The reference identifies these as inherited node attributes, but does not define additional behavior or a conversion between them. Treat them as separate queryable attributes rather than assuming that one is always the inverse of the other.
Use names to make a search more recognizable
Animation nodes inherit the name attribute, whose short name is n. The examples show quoted strings, such as an.n "A" and an.n "L*". If you already know a name or a useful name pattern, this gives you a way to express that clue in the animation namespace. Keep the value in quotation marks, as in the documented examples.
A practical approach is to begin with the clue you trust most: visibility, hidden state, or name. Then consult the matching nodes and refine your search using another documented attribute if needed. This is especially helpful when names alone are not enough to distinguish the animation nodes in a complex working scene.
Selection attributes have an important naming detail
The attribute space includes both selected and selectionFlag. The examples for selected are an.selected and not an.selected. Unlike many of the other entries in the table, selected has no short name in the animation attribute space. In particular, the node-level short name s is not available for this inherited animation attribute. Use the full expression an.selected when querying it.
selectionFlag, by contrast, has the short name sf, with examples an.sf false and an.sf. The attribute list also provides visibilityFlag, abbreviated vf, with examples an.vf false and an.vf. These are distinct attributes in the reference; choose the one whose name matches the property you intend to inspect rather than substituting it for selected or visible.
A quick reference for animation searches
an.v— visiblenot an.v— not visiblean.h— hiddennot an.h— not hiddenan.n "A"— name examplean.selected— selectedan.sf false— selectionFlag examplean.vf false— visibilityFlag example
The benefit of learning these few forms is less about memorizing abbreviations and more about making your search intent explicit. When an animation is difficult to locate, you can narrow the question to its name, visibility, hidden state, or selection-related attributes, while keeping the query scoped to animation nodes.
For the complete attribute reference, see SAMSON’s animation attributes documentation.
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