Reference Guide
Reference Guide
Reference Guide
Reference Guide
Reference Guide
Reference Guide
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Used to set animation settings and create animations. Opens when the Animation Producer dialog icon is clicked in the Animation Settings tool box, or when Utilities > Render > Animation is chosen.
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Animation Producer dialog box | |
Lists all the script entries in the active script file.
Right-clicking a script entry opens a menu that lets you directly edit, enable, disable, delete, or send the selected script entry to the Velocity Graph.
Double-clicking a script entry also opens the relevant edit dialog box to let you edit the entry.
Contains controls for previewing scripts. The scroll bar and text field indicate the current preview frame. Additional Preview settings are available in the Preview Settings dialog box, which is opened by choosing Settings > Preview in this dialog box.
Starts previewing the active script.
Starts previewing the active script backwards — that is, in reverse order of preview frames.
Freezes elements at the current preview frame. When animations are previewed, the animated elements temporarily display differently, but no changes are made to the design file. Freezing the geometry writes the geometry to the design file at the preview frame location and therefore makes the preview display permanent.
Sets the view number to animate and/or record.
Opens the Open Script dialog box, which is used to open an existing script file.
The controls are analogous to the controls in the Open dialog box.
Opens the Include Script dialog box, which is used to include another script in the active script.
 | This can be quite useful when an animation includes more than one moving objects. The scripts for each set of objects can be developed separately and combined by including them in a single master script. It is possible also to animate objects in a reference by including a script that was produced while in that file. |
Opens the Scale Script dialog box, which lets you scale the script. This is useful for increasing or decreasing the length of an animation without the need to edit each script entry.
Clears all entries from the current script. An Alert box warns you prior to the entries being deleted.
Saves the active script.
By default, the active script is saved with same name in the same directory as the active design file, but with the extension “.msa.”
Opens the Save Script As dialog box, which is used to save the active script with a different filename.
The controls are analogous to the controls in the Save As dialog box.
Opens the Record Script dialog box, which is used to set the Shading mode, the file format, and record the active script.
Opens the Select File dialog box, which is used to select an Animator Settings File (.asf) to continue a recording that was previously aborted, or to use multiple computers to render the animations sequence.
When continuing an aborted sequence, only frames that do not already exist are recorded.
In order to use more than one system to render an animation, all of the systems need to have access to a common (network) drive where the animation frames are stored as they are created. By starting the animation on more than one system and turning on Continue Existing Sequence, the time to render is greatly reduced.
Opens the Record Selected Frames dialog box, which is used to set the file format and record the selected frames.
Opens the Motion Blur dialog box, which is used to exaggerate the motion blur effect on an animation.
Closes the Animation Producer dialog box.
Opens the Animator Tree View dialog box, which is used to control the display of animation items in the Animator Tree View dialog box's list box. Clicking the logo, or double-clicking the name, expands the tree to the next level, displaying the animation groups. Any item that has a “+” indicates that it can be expanded.
Opens the Animator Timeline dialog box, which is used to view the animated items in a graphical format. You can make adjustments to the critical points such as keyframe frame numbers, graphically, by dragging the point to the new frame.
Opens the Animator Velocity Graph dialog box, which is used to view and edit motion velocity curves.
Opens the Animate Render Setting dialog box, which is used to script changes to general rendering and global lighting settings. These are equivalent to the functions performed by the Animate General Settings and Animate Global Lighting Settings tools.
Used to script a light source. See Animate Source Lighting Settings for more information.
Opens the Animate Material Characteristic dialog box, which is used to script a material characteristic. See Animate Material Settings for more information.
Opens the Animation Keyframes dialog box, which is used to create, script, or delete keyframes.
Opens the Animation Parameters dialog box, which is used to create, edit and delete animation parameters.
Opens the Preview Settings dialog box which contains settings that control the preview of animation sequences.
Opens the Script Saved View dialog box, which is used to script a saved view.
Opens the General Settings dialog box which is used to set the frames per second for playback.