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.