Creating compelling molecular animations often requires more than just smooth transitions and camera movements. Sometimes, you need to pause and let your audience absorb a key concept or molecular interaction—especially in educational content or when presenting complex conformational changes. Fortunately, the Pause animation in SAMSON makes this both possible and easy to manage.
Many molecular modelers face the challenge of guiding viewers through intricate molecular events. In educational scenarios, it’s common for an instructor to say something like, “Let’s stop here for a second—see how this ligand interacts with the active site?” But unless you manually interrupt the playback, animations don’t pause. That’s where the Pause animation helps: it gives you full control over when—and for how long—your presentation should stop, ensuring your viewers don’t miss what matters most.
Where the Pause Helps
The Pause animation is particularly useful when you want to:
- Highlight a key frame where a binding or reaction event is occurring
- Give the viewer time to process a molecular rearrangement
- Add narration or annotations that require a brief stop
- Ensure your animations sync seamlessly with audio explanations or live commentary
How to Add a Pause
Adding a Pause animation is straightforward:
- Open the Animation panel in the Animator.
- Double-click on the Pause effect. A keyframe will appear at the current frame in your timeline.
- If needed, drag the keyframe to reposition it at the correct moment in the animation.
Note
You can always move keyframes to better synchronize with your molecular story.
Fine-Tune the Pause Duration
Once the Pause animation is in place, it’s important to control how long the presentation should stay on hold. You can do this in the Inspector:
- Select the Pause animation node in the Document view.
- The Inspector will display a property for Pause duration; set this value to the number of seconds you want.
This lets you go from quick half-second pauses to several seconds for longer explanations.
Visual Reference
To make sure you’re editing the right property, here’s a visual example of how the Pause animation appears in the Inspector:
Final Thoughts
The Pause animation in SAMSON offers a precise way to bring structure and clarity to molecular presentations. Rather than overloading viewers with continuous motion, you can now let them view key structures at their own pace—or yours. Whether you’re teaching, demoing, or exploring molecular behaviors, the ability to insert thoughtful pauses could make your message clearer and more impactful.
To learn more, visit the full documentation page here: https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/animations/pause/
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download them at https://www.samson-connect.net.