When creating molecular presentations, visual clarity contributes significantly to the understanding and impact of your work. One common challenge molecular modelers face is: how can I make my presentation visually coherent while transitioning between multiple views? This is especially relevant during animations that guide audiences through simulations, pathways, or reactions.
SAMSON helps address this challenge by enabling users to smoothly set and transition between custom backgrounds during animations. Whether you’re showcasing molecular interactions or giving a talk to students, customizing the background can enhance your message.
Why Set a Background?
Setting a background during an animation in SAMSON allows you to:
- Make presentations more visually engaging
- Introduce slides/images for context during animations
- Maintain visual continuity between frames
Embeddable background images can support narrative flow by displaying diagrams, schematics, or slide-style content. This is especially helpful for presentation recordings or live demos.
How It Works
The Set background animation in SAMSON lets you define background content between two frames. You can either use a solid-color background or an image. Images can be included either as fully contained (showing the full image within the screen space) or as covers (fitted to fill the area, but possibly cropped).
If you place multiple Set background animations across your timeline, SAMSON interpolates smoothly between them. This minimizes abrupt changes and results in fluid scene-to-scene transitions. These interpolations can also be customized through easing curves to fine-tune how quickly or slowly the change happens.
How to Add the Animation
To add the Set background animation:
- Open the Animation panel in SAMSON’s Animator.
- Double-click on Set background. This adds the animation and sets the starting keyframe at your current position in the timeline.
- You can then move the position of the keyframes as needed.
- Set the background settings (color/image) in the Inspector panel for the animation.
The animation uses 2 keyframes:
- At keyframe 1, the background is set as configured.
- Between keyframe 1 and keyframe 2, the interpolation occurs (if another background is defined after keyframe 2).
You can adjust the speed and style of transition by changing the easing curve. This gives you control over the animation’s pacing, such as smoother fades or sharp changes.
Conclusion
Using background transitions effectively can help molecular modelers create clearer, more structured storytelling in their presentations. If you’re new to SAMSON or want to level up your animations, experimenting with background transitions could be a good next step.
To learn more, visit the documentation: https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/animations/set-background/