Overview

Animation adds a new dimension to 3D design. Using MicroStation's Animation Producer utility, you can create animation sequences that show your designs in action. For architectural models, you can produce walkthroughs with a flexibility not available in the simple Fly Through producer.

Animation, when combined with MicroStation's advanced rendering capabilities, provides an outstanding level of engineering visualization.

Whether your design consists of a single object, or several, you can produce animation sequences. The Animation Producer provides several different ways to define and control motion. The method used to produce an animation sequence depends on the type of design.

You can animate design elements, including camera and lighting cells. As well, you can animate the settings for light sources, and material definitions. With light sources, you can change the intensity/lumens, color, and the cone/delta angle (spot lights). You can change a material's characteristics, such as the pattern or bump map settings, as well as the associated scale and offset values. Additionally, the material palette file 'proctext.pal' contains several animated procedural textures (fire, flame, and fog) that you can use.

The Animation Producer dialog box is used to control the Animation Producer utility.

1. From the Utilities menu's Render submenu, choose Animation.
   or
   In the Animation Settings tool box, click the Animation Producer dialog icon.

   Animation Producer dialog box