In molecular modeling presentations, clarity is key. Whether you’re showing structural rearrangements, highlighting specific regions, or simplifying a complex scene, hiding certain parts of your molecular model can greatly help your audience stay focused. But removing components abruptly can be jarring, especially in dynamic visualizations. What if there was a smooth, logical way to control visibility over time?
The Hide animation in SAMSON offers exactly that: a clean, controlled way to hide nodes during an animated presentation. This feature is particularly useful for molecular modelers who want to structure narratives effectively in presentations, movies, or learning materials.
What does the Hide animation do?
The Hide animation is designed to make nodes invisible starting from a specific keyframe through to the end of the animation. Unlike changing transparency, the Hide effect completely removes the visual representation of selected nodes without impacting the rest of the scene.
It essentially acts as a shortcut to combine two consecutive animations—Shown and Hidden—into a single step. This improves usability and creates a smoother workflow when structuring molecule visibility in time-dependent animations.
How to add a Hide animation
To use the Hide animation in SAMSON:
- Select one or more nodes you want to hide.
- Double-click the Hide effect from the Animation panel inside the Animator.
Once added, this animation includes three keyframes:
- Keyframes 1 to 2: nodes remain visible.
- At keyframe 2: nodes disappear instantly.
- Keyframes 2 to 3: nodes stay hidden.
You can move these keyframes at any time to adjust when visibility changes occur. This flexibility is useful for synchronizing node disappearance with other animations such as moving, transforming, or emphasizing other parts of the molecular model.
Customize your transitions
By default, visibility in the Hide animation changes instantly at keyframe 2. If you’d like smoother or delayed changes for other animation types, SAMSON lets you adjust the easing curve. While this doesn’t apply to Hide itself (since it toggles visibility), it’s useful knowledge when composing adjacent effects.
This GIF shows an example of the Hide animation in action: selected parts of the molecule remain visible until keyframe 2, then disappear cleanly from the scene.
When should a molecular modeler use Hide?
Here are common scenarios in which the Hide animation can simplify storytelling and reduce on-screen clutter:
- Presenting conformational changes without visual distraction from previously-present structures.
- Highlighting reaction intermediates or transition states by removing initial state structures mid-animation.
- Creating educational videos where content is revealed step-by-step over time.
You no longer need to split your visualizations into multiple scenes or manually try to animate visibility through indirect means. The Hide animation does this reliably and predictably—helping you focus on communicating molecular insights.
To learn more about the Hide animation in SAMSON, visit the full documentation page here.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can get SAMSON here.