Visualization Guide
Visualization Guide
Visualization Guide
Visualization Guide
Visualization Guide
Visualization Guide
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In producing animations, you can choose from the most basic method, keyframing, or more advanced methods — motion along paths and parametric motion control. Where necessary, these techniques can be combined to produce animations that would be very difficult with one method alone.
Keyframing is the most basic form of animation. It is similar to that used in producing cartoons and does not require that elements first be defined as actors.
Here, you move elements to the required locations or orientations for certain keyframes. From here, the system automatically computes the frames in between these keyframes. Historically, in cartoon animation, this in-betweening function, or simply called “tweening,” has been performed by assistant animators referred to as “in-betweeners.”
Where you have a number of elements that are to be “keyframed” it can be much more convenient to first define them as actors. This lets you keyframe and script each actor individually. Additionally, where you want to change the motion of only one of the elements, you can work with that element (actor) in isolation.
 | In creating a keyframe, it is far more efficient to include only the geometry that is being animated. |
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Animation KeyFrames dialog box | |
You can define a path along which an actor, animation camera, or target (the latter two are specialized actors) moves. Scripting motion along paths is useful for creating a flythrough-type sequence, for example, where the camera moves along one path, while its target moves along another. An actor can be scripted simultaneously to move along a path, while under parametric motion control.
Often, animation of complex assemblies is very difficult with keyframing. In these cases you can use parametric motion control, which lets you specify geometry position and orientation as a function of time. This is an attractive alternative, particularly when you know the equations of motion. A set of built-in variables and functions is available to assist in defining these equations. Additionally, you can define new variables, based on the built-in variables, or any user-defined variable.
Ways that an actor can be manipulated, parametrically, are defined at the time of the actor's creation. During scripting, the parametric motion is defined relative to frame numbers.
| Parametric motion control can be performed only on elements that have been defined as actors. |
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Parametric motion is defined when scripting an actor. Here, in the Script Actor dialog box rotation about the Z axis has been defined as 5° per frame. | |
The Animation Producer uses terminology consistent with that used in the production of movies. You can create actors and scripts. As well, you can animate cameras, targets, and light sources.
Integral to the production of a real life movie is the script. The same applies to producing an animation sequence.
A script file is an ASCII text file that contains the information required for the system to create the animation sequence — keyframes, views, parameter definitions, and parametric actor controls. This information is in the form of script entries. The script entries in the open script file are collectively known as the open script. The open script is displayed in the list box in the Animation Producer dialog box. Each list box entry corresponds to a script entry. Disabled entries are indicated in red. You can resize the dialog box in order to increase (or decrease) the number of entries that are visible without scrolling.
As you create keyframes, define an actor's path, or script an actor, material, camera or light, script entries are automatically generated.
An actor is simply one or more DGN file elements that move, rotate, or scale in a controlled manner. Movement, defined in a script, can be controlled by keyframes, or with parametric motion control.
Special cells are available to be placed in the design to designate animation cameras and their targets. One or more of these then can be used in the animation sequence, by scripting them to become active from a particular frame number. From that specified frame, the animation view is taken from the nominated camera. Since cameras and targets are also actors, you can move them during the animation by scripting them.
As with rendering a single image, lighting is integral to producing animation sequences. You can script light sources to move, and you can animate each of their settings with scripts.
An alternate method for controlling actors is to specify a path along which the actor moves during a sequence of frames. This method is particularly useful for controlling animation camera and target motion.
Following is the general procedure for producing an animation sequence.
| The Movies utility (Utilities > Image > Movies) can be used to play back animation sequences in the MicroStation environment. |