Rendering Animations
From ShadeCamp
Now you can learn about animation. For animation, time-based motions are specified for a shape, and a separate image is rendered for each unit (frame) along the time-axis. The animation is viewed by displaying the images serially.
Creating a Movie File
1 Open the Animation.shd file from the Chapter 18 folder within the User Guide folder.
Does this shape look familiar? In this file, animation settings are already completed for the object for which you made a Skin setting in the previous chapter.
To create a movie file, you will perform animation rendering.
2 Before starting the animation rendering, display the Image window and make the settings in the Rendering Options.
This Rendering Options are exactly the same as that for the still image rendering. In this example, you will perform the rendering with the settings as shown in the above figure.
When the size of the rendered images is too large, your computer may not be able to play the movie file smoothly. That’s why we use a smaller size here.
3 Select the Rendering menu / Create Animation….
4 When the Animation Settings dialog box appears, enter 40 in the Total Frames text box.
The value entered here is the number of frames to be rendered. You may leave the other settings at the defaults.
Press OK once these settings are completed.
5 The Save dialog box appears.
For Windows:
Movie files are saved in either in the AVI Movie file format (AVI File) or the QuickTime Movie file format (Movie) by selecting one of them in the File Type pull-down menu in the Save dialog box. You can also output and save numbered image files by selecting any file format from the Bitmap Files, PICT Files, or Targa Files.
For Mac OS X:
You can save movie files in the QuickTime Movie file format by selecting “Movie” in the Format pulldown menu in the Save dialog box. You can also save numbered image files by selecting any of the available file formats.
Enter a name for the movie file and choose a folder.
6 Press the Save button. The Compression Settings dialog box appears.
For QuickTime:
In the CODEC pull-down menu, the compression algorithm for the movie file is selected. For this lesson, select “Cinepak,” and “Millions of Colors” in the Depth pull-down menu.
The Quality Slider sets the movie image quality (compression amount). Leave it at the default setting, “Best”.
The Frames per second pull-down menu can be used to set the number of frames to playback in one second. Leave it at he default setting, “30”.
The Key frame checkbox should be on and set to 15 frames.
Leave the Limit data rate to checkbox off.
For AVI:amount). Leave it at the default value, 100.
In the Compression Program pull-down menu, the compression algorithm for the movie file is selected. For this lesson, select “Cinepak Codec by Radius”.
The Compression Quality slider sets the movie image quality (compression The Key frame checkbox should be on and set to 15 frames.
Leave the Data Rate checkbox off.
Note: A compression program is also referred to as a CODEC, and is selected according to the purpose of the movie file. Although Cinepak provides smooth replay under various environments, image quality is reduced by the compression process.
7 Press OK. Rendering starts after a few seconds.
The frame being rendered and the final frame number are displayed in the Title Bar of the Image window when animation rendering is in process. Frame numbers start from 0. Since we set the Total Frames to 40, The frame numbers range from 0 to 39.
8 When the animation rendering is finished, let’s play the movie file that was created.
To replay the movie file, either double-click it, or open it with QuickTime Player (for a QuickTime Movie file), or with Media Player (for an AVI Movie file). Note: An AVI Movie file can also be opened with QuickTime Player.
If you replay the movie file, you will see an animation in which the arm is bending. You will actually make the settings for this animation in a later chapter. Observe the motion of the arm carefully.
Reviewing Animation Rendering
The image quality of created movie files largely depends on the compression algorithm (CODEC) set in the Compression Settings dialog box. Although the image quality is generally poor when using a CODEC with a high compression rate, the movie file will be smaller.
The Cinepak CODEC used in this chapter is a typical case. The opposite of this is the “None” setting. Because this setting literally does no compression, very good image quality will result. However, the movie file may be extremely large.
Try rendering the same animation using different CODECs. You can clearly see the differences in image quality and file size associated with various CODECs and compression quality settings. |
