SAMSON provides a wide variety of animations making it easy to create complex animations, presentations, and movies. Different animations act on different objects - some act on cameras, some act on nodes like structural models, visual models, meshes, and labels.

Learn more in the video tutorial: How to create molecular animations in SAMSON.

The animations can be found in the Animation panel of the Animator :

The Animation Panel

The main animations are also shown in the Animation menu:

The Animation menu

Animations are applied in correspondence with their order in the presentation as seen in the document. This means that if you have, for example, several camera animations at the same frame then they will be applied consecutively and the state of the camera will correspond to the last camera animation applied at that frame. You can always changed the order of animations in a presentation - simply use the drag-and-drop mechanism.

Motion animations

Assemble and Disassemble - animate assembling of systems.
Dock and Undock - animate docking.
Hold atoms - hold atoms positions fixed between two frames.
Move atoms - make atoms move freely; the animation will interpolate between the positions of the atoms to which the animation was applied.
Rock - make a group of particles rock around its geometric center.
Rotate - make a group of particles rotate around its geometric center.
Play path and Play reverse path - animate one or more trajectories.

Note: If you use motion animations, then, preferably, for the structural nodes to which motion animations were applied you should also apply the Hold atoms animation at frames where no motion animations other than the Hold atoms animation are used. This is optional but might be necessary because positions of structural nodes can be changed when working with the document or when switching between frames of the presentation. It will ensure that these structural nodes have proper positions along the presentation.

Camera animations

Dolly camera - a dolly effect, i.e. zoom the camera between two frames with changing the camera's target point.
Follow atoms - continuously follow the specified atoms. Both the camera target and the camera position move in order to preserve a constant distance between the camera and the atoms.
Hold camera - fix the camera at the certain position. Use this if you don't use other camera animations at some frames and you would like to have a certain view since the view can be changed while working with the document.
Look at atoms - continuously look at the specified atoms. Only the camera target moves while the camera position does not change.
Move camera - create custom camera paths.
Orbit camera - orbit around a system.
Pedestal camera - move the camera vertically between two keyframes (in the camera reference frame).
Truck camera - moves the camera horizontally between two keyframes (in the camera reference frame).
Zoom camera - zoom the camera between two frames.

Note: Preferably, you should always have some camera animation at each frame to specify the camera position because the camera position can be changed when working with the document. If you don't need to use any advanced camera animations then just use the Hold camera animation to have a defined static view of your system. This will ensure that the active camera has proper positions along the presentation.

Entrance and Exit effects

Appear and Disappear - make nodes progressively appear or disappear; can only be applied to nodes with the transparency attribute, e.g. structural nodes, visual models, meshes, and labels.
Reveal atoms and Conceal atoms - make atoms appear or disappear progressively between two frames.
Show and Hide - show or hide nodes at the current frame.
Shown and Hidden - make nodes shown or hidden between two frames.

Note: Preferably, to make sure that all the nodes are shown/hidden as expected at each frame, you should always specify what nodes should be shown or hidden at frames where no other Entrance, Exit, or Highlighting effects are applied to those nodes. This is optional but might be necessary because the visibility or transparency of nodes can be changed when working with the document or when switching between frames of the presentation. It will ensure that these structural nodes have proper visibility along the presentation.

Highlighting effects

Flash - make nodes appear at the begin keyframe and disappear at the end keyframe by changing their visibility.
Pulse - make nodes progressively appear then disappear by changing their transparency. It can only be applied to nodes with the transparency attribute, e.g. structural nodes, visual models, meshes, and labels.

Other animations

Pause - pause the presentation at a given frame for a given number of seconds which can be specified in the Inspector.
Stop - stop the presentation at a given frame. To resume the presentation press Space or the Play button in animator's controls. You can use this, for example, to subdivide your presentation into slides.
Set background - set background between two frames; you can also display background images such as presentation slides.

Examples

See Presentations: Examples.

Animation controllers

Some camera and motion animations (e.g., Move camera and Move atoms animations) have their controllers shown in the Viewport. You can hide/show those controllers by checking/unchecking this animation in the Document view or by right-clicking on it and, in the context menu, clicking "Hide/Show animation controllers".

See Adjusting camera positions on how to use camera animation controllers to adjust camera positions.

By default, when playing a presentation or exporting it in a movie or in frames the animation controllers will be hidden - you can modify this in Preferences > Rendering > Presentations.

Adjusting camera positions

Most of the camera animations have specialized camera controllers allowing for fine positioning of the camera: the target point, camera orientations, etc. In the viewport, you can see the associated keyframe numbers shown near the keyframe camera animation controllers. Let's see how it looks like with an example of the Move camera animation. Note, if you don't see the camera controllers, you might need to zoom out in the viewport (use the mouse scroll button or press Ctrl/ Cmd⌘ + -).

Advanced keyframe camera motions

While editing camera positions, Thumbnails automatically appear at the bottom of the viewport to help you frame the best shots. Thumbnails are shown for the currently modified keyframe and for the next and previous keyframes (if any) of the currently modified camera animation.

Easing curve

Some animations have parameters that specify the rate of change of some parameters along the animation which are governed by easing functions. In that case, you can choose which easing function/curve will be used. You can check the https://easings.net web-page to see how easing functions change a parameter over time - hover above an easing function to see how it changes.