Molecular modeling platforms like SAMSON help researchers design and visualize complex molecular systems efficiently. As model complexity grows, keeping your workspace organized becomes increasingly important—especially when using light nodes to control illumination, shadows, and visual clarity in molecular scenes.
One common friction point for modelers is efficiently managing light sources in large documents. When you can’t tell which lights are active, hidden, or selected, you risk wasting time navigating your scene or misinterpreting visual results. Fortunately, SAMSON provides attribute-specific controls through the Node Specification Language (NSL), enabling you to filter and manage light nodes directly with powerful expressions.
Understanding Light Node Attributes
In SAMSON, light nodes are specified within the light attribute space (short name: li). These nodes inherit a set of core attributes from generic nodes, tailored for tasks relevant to lighting. You can use these attributes to quickly search, group, and manage lights across your molecular document.
Key Light Node Attributes
Here are the most useful attributes when managing light nodes:
- hidden (
li.h): Indicates if a light node is hidden. Useli.hto find hidden lights ornot li.hto find those that are shown. - visible (
li.v): Corresponds to node-level visibility. Useli.vto know which lights are currently contributing to the scene. - name (
li.n): Lets you filter by light names. For example,li.n "KeyLight"orli.n "Fill*". - selected (
li.selected): Identifies lights that are currently selected in the viewport. Note: this attribute does not have a short-form alias. - selectionFlag (
li.sf) and visibilityFlag (li.vf): More advanced control flags for selection and visibility behaviors.
Practical Usage Examples
Imagine you’re working on a complex molecular assembly and want to hide secondary lights to focus on a primary directional light. You could use:
|
1 |
not li.n "Primary*" and li.v |
This filters out any visible light nodes whose name does not start with “Primary”—a quick way to audit non-primary lighting.
Want to select only those lights that are currently hidden, perhaps to reveal them again?
|
1 |
li.h |
And what if you want to rename lights based on role? You can easily use the name attribute to find and update them manually through the interface or extensions.
Cleaner Scenes and Better Visualization
Light nodes heavily affect how structures are illuminated and perceived. By actively managing attributes such as visible and hidden, you can ensure that unwanted lights don’t interfere with analysis or screenshots for publication.
Moreover, when working collaboratively or in shared models, naming and filtering lights systematically using li.n allows colleagues to understand illumination setup at a glance.
To explore SAMSON’s Light Node attributes further, visit the official documentation page:
https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/nsl/light/
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net