When preparing molecular animations, it’s often not just about clarity — it’s also about timing. You may want to slow things down at a crucial moment in your molecular presentation to give your audience a chance to absorb what they’re seeing. Maybe you’re highlighting a key conformational change, or pointing out an interaction site in a complex system. With SAMSON’s Pause animation effect, you have a simple yet precise way to control how long a scene stays on a specific frame.
Why Timing Matters in Molecular Animations
Imagine walking your audience through a complex transition, such as ligand binding, or protein folding. If the animation progresses uniformly without pauses, your viewers may miss the key insight. Pausing at strategic frames gives you time to elaborate, whether you’re presenting live or recording a video.
Think of the Pause feature as your way to say: “Let’s stop here. Look closely.”
How to Add a Pause in SAMSON
Adding a pause to your animation in SAMSON is straightforward:
- Open the Animation panel in the Animator.
- Double-click on the Pause animation effect. This inserts a keyframe at the current frame position.
- Drag the keyframe to adjust when the pause occurs during the animation.
Note: Keyframes can always be moved later to fine-tune timing.
Specifying the Duration
To make your pause meaningful, edit its duration via the Inspector:
- Select the Pause animation node in the Document view.
- Adjust the Duration field to control how many seconds the animation should pause.
This makes it easy to set short pauses for brief emphases, or longer ones for more elaborate explanations.
Practical Example
Let’s say you create an animation of a membrane protein changing conformation. You want to highlight the transition state before the protein opens fully.
- Add a pause right before the transition.
- Set the duration to 3 seconds.
- During presentation, this gives your audience enough time to understand the conformation and anticipate what’s coming next.
This small detail can improve the learning experience and help communicate more complex mechanisms effectively.
When to Use Pause Animations
- At the beginning of an animation to give context.
- Before or after structural transitions.
- To highlight binding or unbinding events.
- When showing variations or molecular alignments.
The beauty of the Pause effect is in its flexibility. Whether you’re creating short educational clips or complex molecular videos, well-placed pauses can dramatically improve viewer understanding.
To learn more about this feature, visit the Pause animation documentation page.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can get SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.