When building molecular presentations or demonstrating molecular processes, it’s often critical to preserve how specific atoms move over time. This is especially relevant if you’re simulating docking, assembling models, or animating conformational changes. But how do you make sure that when you replay a presentation, the exact atom movements are preserved?
This is where SAMSON’s Record path animation helps. It’s designed to record atom trajectories by adding a special track during the presentation. If you’ve ever felt the pain of trying to preserve dynamic motion across complex molecular sequences, this animation tackles that exact issue.
Why capturing trajectories matters
In many molecular modeling workflows, you combine multiple animations—docking, moving atoms, simulating transitions—and you expect that the final result captures the full, accurate movement of selected parts of the system. If you don’t record these paths properly, animations might revert, drift, or show inaccurate positions when you replay the sequence or share it with others. The Record path animation solves this by recording positions frame by frame, so you can export the precise path later and reuse it as needed.
Getting started with path recording
To begin, open the Animation panel in the Animator and double-click on the Record path animation effect. This places a keyframe at the current frame. The animation track indicates the recording status: green segments show that positions have been recorded for those frames, while red segments mark areas where data is missing or invalid.
Tips for effective usage
- Animation order matters: The Animator in SAMSON executes animations from top to bottom. Therefore, place Record path after the animations that generate atomic movements (e.g., Dock, Assemble, Simulate).
- Control recording status: You can enable or disable recording via the Inspector. This is helpful to save computational resources while editing. You can also right-click the animation in the Animator and toggle Enable recording.
- Move keyframes freely: Like with other animations in SAMSON, you can reposition keyframes at will to align with different parts of your sequence.
Exporting the path for later use
Once the presentation has played and the entire animation bar is green, you’re ready to export the recorded path as a reusable node:
- In the Inspector of the Record path animation, click Create path.
- Alternatively, in the Animator, right-click the Record path animation and choose Create path.
Where this helps
This feature is especially useful for those crafting molecular presentations with multiple dynamic elements. Whether you’re sharing conformational changes with colleagues, animating a protein-ligand docking, or tracking how atoms respond to external forces, recording paths ensures your motion data is preserved and reusable.
Want to go further with this feature? Visit the official documentation page to learn more.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.