When creating molecular animations, timing plays a crucial role in maintaining audience engagement and clearly communicating what matters. Fast transitions between frames can confuse viewers or cause them to miss critical details. What if you need your audience to absorb information at just the right moment?
This is where the Pause animation in SAMSON becomes a valuable tool. It allows you to freeze your animation at a specific frame for a set duration—giving your viewers a chance to reflect, notice a key interaction, or simply catch up.
Why Timing Matters in Molecular Animations
Molecular modelers regularly use animations to illustrate conformational changes, ligand binding, or molecular dynamics over time. These animations often involve complex movements happening in short timeframes. Without controlled timing, important visual cues can be lost. For example:
- The conformation of a protein loop before docking occurs might be skipped over too quickly.
- A key change in the electrostatic surface might go unnoticed due to rapid transitions.
- Viewers unfamiliar with the subject may need more time to grasp what’s being shown.
Strategic pauses let you emphasize these moments, guiding your audience’s attention exactly where it needs to go.
Using the Pause Effect in SAMSON
Add the Pause animation by double-clicking on the Pause effect in the Animation panel of the Animator interface. This inserts a keyframe at the current frame. If needed, you can move this keyframe to another part of your timeline later.
Note
You can always reposition the Pause keyframe after it’s been added, ensuring flexibility while designing your timeline.
Customizing Pause Duration
After inserting the Pause animation, you can adjust how long the pause should last. To do so:
- Select the animation node in the Document View.
- Open the Inspector.
- Set the duration in seconds.
This gives you precise control over your animation’s rhythm without needing to manually duplicate frames or stretch timelines. The Inspector interface makes this process intuitive:
When Should You Use a Pause?
Some typical use cases include:
- Letting viewers observe ligand-receptor interactions in slow motion.
- Pausing at the apex of a conformational change before transitioning to a new state.
- Freezing right before a reaction step for annotation or commentary.
These pauses can be particularly helpful when preparing educational content or scientific presentations that need to maintain clarity for broader audiences.
Conclusion
Adding a simple pause can significantly enhance the quality and effectiveness of your animations. With SAMSON, doing this is straightforward—and gives you more control over how your story is told molecule by molecule.
To learn more, visit the complete documentation page here: https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/animations/pause/
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. Download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.