When preparing animations of molecular systems, one common challenge researchers face is how to manage visibility transitions without manually toggling the display of each component. Whether you are illustrating a protein domain suddenly becoming relevant in a binding event or simply organizing a step-by-step visualization of a molecular process, you need an efficient and reproducible way to make structural elements appear in your animation.
This is where SAMSON’s Shown animation comes in handy. This feature allows you to make specific nodes appear between keyframes—not by altering their transparency or material properties, but through visibility toggles that keep the scene consistent and easier to manage.
What Does ‘Shown’ Really Do?
The Shown animation works by toggling the visibility flag of selected nodes (atoms, molecules, objects in the SAMSON document) between keyframes. That means your selected molecular components won’t display at first, but will become shown exactly where and when you want them to—frame-precise. It doesn’t gradually fade them in or adjust opacity. It simply shows them, fully and cleanly.
Why It Matters
Visibility transitions are especially helpful in storytelling. For instance:
- Illustrating when a ligand binds to a receptor
- Revealing the environment around an active site during a simulation
- Building up components of a molecular machine to avoid overwhelming complexity for the viewer
This method is reproducible and much easier to adjust than manually tweaking transparency or reorganizing complex visibility layers.
How to Use the Shown Animation
- Select the nodes you’d like to show later in the animation.
- In the Animation panel of the Animator, double-click the Shown effect. This creates a begin keyframe at the current frame.
- Move the end keyframe to the frame where the nodes should become visible.
Pro tip: You can always move the keyframes later, making the animation timeline highly flexible and non-destructive.
Comparison with Other Visibility Effects
It’s easy to confuse Shown with similar effects like Appear, Disappear, Hide, or Flash. The key distinction is that Shown changes the visibility state discretely. It doesn’t animate in a material sense — it’s ideal for clean and analytical representations where timing is everything.
Customizing Transitions
If you want to control how the visibility change is timed, you can adjust the easing curve. This may be less relevant for the binary Shown effect, but works well if combined with other types of animations (e.g., translations or transparency effects).
In the example above, the Shown animation is combined with a Hidden animation to create a simple toggle that can be repeated across frames — perfect for teaching purposes or highlighting interactions dynamically.
To learn more and see this in action, visit the official documentation page: https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/animations/shown/
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON here.