One of the key challenges in molecular modeling is communicating complex molecular motions clearly. Whether you’re modeling ligand binding, protein folding, or molecular assembly, it’s often difficult to visualize trajectories in a way that’s intuitive to others — or even to your future self.
This is where the Record Path animation in SAMSON can save time and provide clarity. Instead of staring at raw coordinate changes or re-playing an animation sequence again and again, you can record a path that visually tracks how atoms move during your presentation.
What does ‘Record Path’ actually do?
Simply put, this animation records the positions of atoms throughout your animation timeline. It creates a visual track — a path — showing how atoms move from one frame to the next. This path acts like a historical trace of atomic trajectories.
You can combine Record Path with other animations like Dock, Move atoms, or Simulate. As long as it’s placed after those animations in the timeline (because SAMSON plays animations top-down), Record Path will capture the movement those animations generate.
How to set it up
Adding the animation is simple:
- Double-click Record Path in the Animation panel.
- A new keyframe appears at the current frame — feel free to move it if needed.
Now play the presentation. As it runs, the path will be drawn. You can monitor progress with the track colors: green segments mean positions have been successfully recorded, while red ones have not. This makes it easy to see if further playback is needed to complete the path capture.
Managing system performance
Recording paths in real-time can be demanding on system resources, especially for longer or more complex animations. If you’re editing or testing other parts of your presentation and don’t need the path to be actively recorded at the moment, you can disable it:
- Go to the Inspector for the animation and uncheck Enable recording.
- Or right-click on the animation in the Animator and toggle Enable recording.
When disabled, the animation’s controllers will appear darkened. This small change can significantly improve performance when editing.
Exporting the path
Once recording is complete and the track is fully green, you can convert the visual trajectory into a Path node in your document. This gives you persistent access to the geometry of the path, independent of the animation.
To do this:
- In the animation’s Inspector, click Create path,
- Or right-click the animation in the Animator and select Create path.
This is particularly useful for exporting or using the path in subsequent workflows, for example to guide other molecules or to analyze the geometrical features of the motion.
To summarize: if you’re modeling molecular motion and want a clearer way to share or study atom trajectories, the Record Path animation in SAMSON is designed for just that. It’s a low-effort way to produce high-impact visual content and improve your modeling workflow.
To learn more, visit the full documentation: https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/animations/record-path/
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.