Animation using Shaded Full mode ?

[R2D2]

Whats the best way to do this in V8 ?:

 

how to generate an animation from saved views, with fixed/given eye and target points.?

- it used to be possible to pick the cameras/views one after another and animate them (i.e. V6)

- walk through animation ?

 

Speed: I was assuming this should generate real quick (openGL, Geforce GTX) as it works in interactive mode...

- first test: select a camera; key it move it somewehere else, 5 sec. sequence (150 frames)

...estimated rendertime for the .fan file: more than 1 hour.

 

What am I missing here: isnt that supposed to work using OpenGL (just like the "switching" animation between saved views) ?

Thx

 

(edit: isnt this more or less like "recording the screen" in OpenGL ?)

[Tech]

Hi R2D2,

 

Here is a quick summary of 3 different methods that you can use to generate animations in formZ:

 

Option 1:  Animating from keyframes:

 

Save all of the desired (keyframe) views in your Views Palette, and select them in the desired order (using  the checkmark to the right of the view name in the palette, or by graphically selecting them in the screen).  Get the Animate Entities tool and click in the screen, and select the desired options.  Click OK, and a new view will be added to the bottom of your View Palette.  Make this view Active, and then you can scrub your timeline or click the Play button see the view animate.

 

(To affect the velocity, you can either space your keyframes appropriately, or after the animation is generated, you can move the keyframes from within the Animation Timeline to adjust this as you would like.)

 

Option 2:  Keyframing a camera (view):

 

Save a view in the Views Palette and make it visible so you can see the camera.  Click on the camera with the Keyframe Tool.  Move the timeline, and then move the camera.  Move the timeline again and move the camera again if desired.  Scrub the timeline, or click Play to see the view animate.

 

Option 3:  Animating along a path:

 

Draw a 2d (open or closed) polyline or curve to serve as your animation path.  Get the Animate Along a Path tool, choose the desired options, click on a View, and then click on the path.  (When selecting these options, you may wish to select Tangent: +Z, Up Axis: +Y.)

 

NOTE that if you want to create an animation of the camera going around your objects (similar to the Turntable feature), you can do this very easily by creating the desired starting view that is centered on your objects.  Then go to a Top view and draw a circle whose center is at the Center of Interest, and whose circumference is on the Eye Point of the camera.  Go to a Side View, and Move the circle straight up so that its height is equal to that of the Eye Point.  Then simply animate the  Eye Point of the camera along this path.

 

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Note also that for both Options 2 and 3, you can Keyframe the entire camera, just the Eyepoint, just the Center of Interest, or both independently if you like.

 

Once you have previewed your animation and have everything as you would like, you can select Generate Animation from the Display Menu to save this as an animation file.  We generally recommend saving this as a FAN file with compression set to Off, or Deflate.  Once this is generated, you can use the File Menu: View File command to play back the animation.  You can then use the File Menu: Export Animation to export the FAN file to a Quicktime Movie file (MOV), to a wide variety of image file formats, or if you are on Windows, you can also export this to an AVI file.  Note that with MOV or AVI, you can select from different CODEC options, which will affect the quality and size of the resulting animation.

 

You can also right click on any tool in formZ and choose Manual to open the documentation to the appropriate page. 

 

In addition, there are many animation videos that you can find here:

 

<http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEF4E89FBDF4318F1&feature=plcp>

 

These videos are for formZ 6, but this applies 99% to the current versions of formZ.

 

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To Generate an Animation, choose this command from the Display Menu once you have animated your camera(s) and / or object(s).

 

This should then generate the animation much more quickly than using RenderZone or other static render displays, but for each frame, the camera is moved, the image is generated, then the image is saved to the animation file.  This is a bit more computationally intensive than simply recording the screen (and it will give better results and not skip any frames) but if your card is capable of playing the animation in real time, you could use a screen capture program to create the movie file a bit more quickly.

[R2D2]

Thank you, I was looking for the good old "Option 1" way, and I have now found the "animate entities" tool.

After generating a fly-through, fine tuning the resulting paths for cam and target gives me a headache though: 

some cameras can be moved, some turn purple when selected, some move by manipulating the spline... I was hoping I could move the cameras and targets using snap tools still ?

One more hint ?

[Tech]

Hi R2D2,

 

We are not sure if we understand exactly what you are asking, but there are lots of great tips and tricks in the Animation Tutorials that are located at the end of the Animation section of the formZ Manual:

 

http://www.formz.com/manuals/formZ8/Animation/!SSL!/WebHelp/animation.php?url_str=21600_Generating_and_Saving_Animations.html

 

 

If you go through those, does that help get you going in the right direction?