Animation Cuts

Animation Cuts

Cuts in an animation are simply points where the camera pauses for a while. They are inserted automatically when you click on Pause during the interactive recording of an animation, or you can insert them manually into an existing animation.

Inserting pasues into an animation

1. Right click on the frame below where you want to insert the cut.

2. Choose Add Cut from the context menu.

3. Type in the name of the cut, or hit Enter to accept the default name, which will be "CutX", where 'X' is the next available number.

4. This default duration of a cut is 1 second. To alter the duration of this pause, right click on the cut and choose Edit

   The Edit Animation Cut dialog is displayed

   

5. Type in the duration of the pause in seconds.

6. Click OK to set the duration or Cancel to return o JetStream without setting it.

Creating Animations

Creating Animations

There are two ways to create animations in JetStream. You can either simply record your real time walk through, or you can assemble specific viewpoints for JetStream to interpolate into an animation later for a more controlled animation.

All animation is controlled through the Tools, Animation menu, the Viewpoints control bar and the Animation toolbar, which is shown below.

Creating an animation in real time

1. Click on the Record button on the Animation toolbar.

2. Navigate around in the main navigation window while JetStream records your movement. You can even move the section plane(s) through the model during your navigation and this will be recorded into the animation too.

3. At any point during the navigation, you can click on the Pause button . This will pause the recording while you maneuver into a new position. Click on the Pause button again to continue recording the animation. The resulting animation will contain a cut for the duration of the pause.

4. When finished, click on the Stop button

5. A new animation called "AnimationX", where 'X' is the latest available number, will be added to the Viewpoints control bar. The name will be editable at this point if you want to name it yourself. This animation will also become the current active animation in the Animation toolbar's drop down.

While the above method is useful for creating quick animations on the fly, sometimes you need more control over the animation camera. To do this in JetStream, you need to set up several viewpoints and add them to an empty animation. When playing back the animation, JetStream will then interpolate between these viewpoints.

Creating an animation frame by frame

1. Right click on the Viewpoints control bar and select Add Empty Animation from the context menu.

2. A new animation called "AnimationX", where 'X' is the latest available number, will be added to the Viewpoints control bar. The name will be editable at this point if you want to name it yourself. There will be no plus sign next to the animation, showing that the animation is indeed empty.

3. Create the viewpoints where you want the camera to move through during the animation and save these into the Viewpoints control bar. These will become the frames for the animation. The more frames you have, the smoother and more predictable the animation will be. See for more information on creating viewpoints.

4. When you have all the viewpoints, simply drag them onto the empty animation you just created. You can drag them on one by one, or select multiple viewpoints using the Control and Shift keys and drag several on at once. If you drop them onto the animation icon itself, then the viewpoints will become frames at the end of the animation, but you can drop the viewpoints anywhere on the expanded animation to put them where you wish.

5. At this point, you can use the slider bar on the Animation toolbar to move backward and forward through the animation to see how it looks.

6. You can edit any of the viewpoints inside the animation (see for details on this), or you can add more viewpoints, delete them, move them around, add cuts and edit the animation itself (see ) until you are happy with the animation.

7. Once you have several animations, you can drag and drop them onto a master animation to compose more complex combinations of animations, just like dragging and dropping viewpoints onto an animation as a frame.

Editing Animations

Editing Animations

Once an animation is recorded, you can edit it to set the duration, the type of smoothing and whether it loops or not.

Editing an animation

1. Right click on the animation you want to edit in the Viewpoints control bar.

   The Edit Animation dialog is displayed

   

2. Type in the duration in seconds in the Duration edit box.

3. If you want the animation to play back continuously, check the Loop Playback check box.

4. From the Smoothing drop down, select the type of smoothing you want the animation to use. None means that the camera will move from one frame to the next without any attempt at smoothing out the corners. The speed of movement between frames of an animation is dictated by the angular and linear speeds of the individual frames and so choosing Synchronise angular/linear speeds will smooth the differences between the speeds of each frame in the animation, resulting in a less jerky animation.

5. Click OK to set these options, or Cancel to return to JetStream leaving the animation as it was.

There is also nothing to stop you copying animations (hold down the Control key when dragging an animation in the Viewpoints control bar), dragging frames off the animation into a blank space on the Viewpoints control bar to remove them from the animation, editing individual frames attributes, inserting cuts or dragging other viewpoints or animations onto the existing one, to continue developing your animations.

Playing Back Animations

Playing Back Animations

You can choose any one of the animations saved in the Viewpoints control bar to play back in real time in the main navigation window. Playing back an animation in real time means that the NavisWorks engine is still attempting to maintain the guaranteed frame rate and so some drop-out may still occur, just as in real time navigation. However, you can export the animation to an .avi file for playback with Windows Media Player and this will render each frame without any drop out. Of course, you don't have the option of pausing the playback half way through to look around the mode using this method! See for details on how to export an animation to .avi.

Playing back an animation

1. Select the animation you wish to play back from either the Viewpoints control bar, or from the drop down on the Animation toolbar.

2. You can use the slider to quickly move forwards and backwards through the animation. Full left is at the beginning and full right is at the end. The text box next to the slider shows the point in time (in seconds) through the animation that the camera is. You can type a number into this box to set the camera at a certain point in the animation and play back from that point.

3. Notice how the frame in the animation in the Viewpoints control bar is highlighted when the animation is playing. You can click on any frame to set the camera to that point in time in the animation and continue playing back from there.

4. Use the buttons on the Animation toolbar to step and play forwards and backwards through the animation:

   • Rewind will rewind the animation back to the beginning.

   • Step Back will step back a single frame.

   • Reverse Play will play the animation backwards.

   • Pause will pause the animation at the frame you press it at. You can then look around and wonder off in the model, or step forwards and backwards through the animation. To continue playing from where you paused, just press Play again.

   • Stop will stop the animation playing and rewind back to the beginning.

   • Play will play the animation from the currently selected frame.

   • Step Forwards will step one frame forwards.

   • Forward will fast forward the animation to the end.