When preparing molecular animations, researchers often want to draw attention to specific structures or events at the right moment in time. Whether you’re explaining a protein-folding pathway, illustrating a conformational change, or just organizing your story better, revealing the right part of your molecular system at the right time is crucial.
This is where the Shown animation in SAMSON becomes particularly useful. It provides a way to control the visibility of nodes (atoms, structures, or groups) over time—without transitioning through partial transparency. Instead, it cleanly hides or shows nodes at defined moments, providing crisp timing and clarity in your visual narrative.
Why not transparency?
Transparency-based animations are helpful when emphasizing the spatial relationship between elements, but they can become visually cluttered when used repeatedly. The Shown animation avoids this by completely turning elements off or on in your scene, creating simple visual switches that help guide the viewer’s attention without distraction.
How it works
To create a Shown animation:
- Select the nodes you want to control the visibility of. These can be atoms, groups, or even entire molecules.
- Open the Animation panel available in the Animator.
- Double-click the Shown animation effect. This automatically adds a keyframe at your current position in the animation timeline.
- Adjust the positions of the keyframes to determine when the selected elements become visible in the animation.
Confused about when to use ‘Shown’ vs. ‘Appear’? Here’s a tip: ‘Shown’ simply toggles visibility on or off at specific times, whereas ‘Appear’ gradually fades the object into view using transparency. Choose ‘Shown’ when you need an immediate, distraction-free toggle.
Fine-tuning with easing curves
If your animation needs smooth transitions even for visibility toggles (for example, to coordinate with other visual effects), you can modify how the parameters change over time using the Easing Curve options. Although the visibility itself is not interpolated (it’s either on or off), the timing of the visibility change can be synchronized more effectively with other animated properties using easing curves for overall better pacing.
What changed in the interface?
Earlier versions of SAMSON used an Animation menu to access these effects. Now, everything is accessed through the Animation panel within the Animator itself. This change streamlines the workflow, putting all animation controls in one place.
If you’re working on educational content, visual abstracts, or even journal-submitted graphical summaries, clean visibility animations like Shown can make your message more powerful.
Learn more about the Shown animation in the SAMSON documentation.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can get SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.