If you create scientific animations to explain molecular mechanisms, you likely know how frustrating it is when parts of your model clutter the scene before they’re relevant. Clarity in storytelling often relies on visual timing — showing the right components at the right moment. This is where SAMSON’s Show animation can make a big difference.
Many molecular modelers struggle with maintaining control over object visibility across animation timelines. Workarounds like manipulating transparency can be tedious and less intuitive. Fortunately, SAMSON provides a cleaner, more efficient tool: the Show animation effect.
What is the Show Animation?
The Show animation effect enables selected nodes — such as atoms, molecules, or groups — to become visible at a specific point during your animation, remaining visible thereafter. It’s a combination of what SAMSON also calls the Hidden and Shown animation types, packaged into a streamlined solution for step-by-step appearance.
Unlike transparency changes, this animation toggles actual visibility, which means the node is either there or it’s not. This approach results in higher visual clarity and is better adapted for presentations, teaching, and scientific videos.
How It Works
The Show animation involves three keyframes:
- Keyframes 1 to 2: the chosen nodes are hidden.
- At Keyframe 2: the nodes become visible.
- Keyframes 2 to 3: the nodes stay visible.
To apply it:
- Select the nodes you want to reveal.
- Double-click the Show effect in the Animation panel.
- Adjust keyframe positions as needed.
You can always reposition keyframes later to fit your animation’s rhythm. This flexibility allows you to coordinate the visibility of different elements with structural transitions, ligand binding events, or other dynamic simulations.
Why Use Show Instead of Transparency?
Unlike adjusting opacity, visibility toggling keeps your rendering and narration cleaner. Transparency still requires visual presence, and elements can become distracting, especially in dense molecular systems. The Show animation avoids that entirely. Also, because visibility is a binary property, you don’t have to worry about varying degrees of transparency appearing inconsistently depending on lighting or rendering settings.
You can also choose how the animation interpolates between frames using an easing curve. This adds a subtle touch of polish by controlling motion speed as the change occurs. Even for a visibility switch, this can make transitions feel more natural, especially in synchronized sequences.
Visual Example
Here’s an example GIF showing the Show animation in action:
A Note on Interface
Earlier versions of SAMSON used an Animation menu that is now deprecated. All modern animation effects are accessible from the Animation panel in the Animator. If you’ve used older versions, this is a helpful change to note.
Conclusion
Whether you’re preparing an educational video, annotating simulation results, or building interactive molecular stories, the Show animation provides straightforward control over visibility timing. It keeps your narrative clean and avoids complications from manual transparency adjustments or node transformations.
To learn more, visit the official documentation: https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/animations/show/
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.