Animate

Menu: Windows->Animate...
Toolbar:

With this window a little bit of automatization has been done to create animations inside GiD. Nowadays, almost all results visualizations are animated. Only stream-lines are not automatized along all the steps of the current analysis.

Some animations can be done with combined results visualization, from the same or different analysis, for instance an isosurface animation from OLS result of ODDLS analysis with a contour fill of Pressure of the RANSOL analysis can also be done with this window. The only constraint is that the number of steps and the step values should be the same in both analysis.

This window lets you create an animation of the current Results View, where the limits can be fixed along the animation with Automatic Limits, and/or an animation of the Deformation of the meshes. Step number and step value are shown. On the slide bar, the step number is shown.

The four buttons under the slide bar are self-explanatory: they 'Rewind', 'Stop', 'Play' and 'Step' the animation. Clicking on the slide bar will rewind or advance the animation. The green LED, which indicates that an animation is ready, will change to red while the animation is being saved to a file. This LED will change back to green when the animation is finished, or the 'Stop' button is pressed.

Options are:

• All step animation: The animation will render the result along all time steps.
• Single step : If there are multiple time steps, then we can choose to do a single step animation for a given time step number. If the project has only one step or the user has chosen to do a single step animation, it is possible to simulate an animation by generating intermediate steps. Use this option to automatically generate several frames, following a lineal, cosine, triangular or sinusoidal interpolation between the normal state and the deformed state.

Options:

• Automatic Limits: GiD searches for the minimum and maximum values of the results along all the steps of the analysis and uses them to draw the results view through all the steps. Previously, it needs to visualize some results.
• Deformation: Permits to record animation with a specific deformation.
• Endless: The animation continues indefinitely.
• From step I to step K: Allows the user to do an animation between step number I and step number J , both included. This is also useful to skip the first step of an animation of a deformed mesh with a result visualization, which is the original state of the mesh, without deformation and without the result visualization.
• View centered and following node : select a 'moving' node and the view will be centered on this node during the animation.
• Simple model animation: together with the result animation the model will be animated too with one of the selected animations: Rotate (model) ; Zoom-In and then Rotate (model) ; Zoom-in and rotate and zoom-out. Each one of them can be configured. Like the "Zoom-in and rotate and zoom-out" window:

Duration:

• Total time: Specifies the duration of the clip.
• Delay: Specify a delay time between steps in milliseconds.
• Use step values as seconds: The number of step will be used to the duration of the clip.

Save image / animation:

• Save TIFF/JPEG/GIFs on: Save snapshots, in TIFF, JPEG or GIF format, of each step when the 'Play' button is pushed. Here the filename given will be used as a prefix to create the TIFF/JPEG/GIFs; for instance, if you write MyAnimation, TIFF/JPEG/GIF files will be created with names MyAnimation-01.tif/MyAnimation-01.gif, MyAnimation-02.tif/MyAnimation-02.gif, and so on.
• Save animation: by checking this options and entering a filename a movie clip will be saved ( by pressing play) with the selected compression method. The supported formats are:
  • MPEG: uses the MPEG-2 standard algorithm to encode the frames, creating an .mpg video.
  • AVI mjpeg: using jpeg compression for each frame.
  • AVI MS Video 1: using Microsoft(R)'s Video 1 compression algorithm.
  • AVI raw True Color: no compression, in 24 bpp ( 16 million colours).
  • AVI raw 15 bpp (VD): no compression but in 15 bpp ( 32 thousand colours).
  • AVI raw 16 bpp (MS): no compression but in 16 bpp ( 65 thousand colours).
  • GIF no dithering: creates an animated gif image, reducing the number of colours to 256 ( creating some band artifacts).
  • GIF dithering595: creates an animated gid image, reducing the number of colours to 256 but applying a dithering algorithm to reduce the band artifacts. The rgb palette used in the dithering algorithm is based on 5 reds, 9 greens and 5 blues.
  • GIF dithering666: creates an animated gid image, reducing the number of colours to 256 but applying a dithering algorithm to reduce the band artifacts. The rgb palette used in the dithering algorithm is based on 6 reds, 6 greens and 6 blues.
  • Macromedia Flash Video ( .flv): creates Macromedia (R) flash video using the Screen video compression format.
  • MP4 (openh264 ffmpeg) : .mp4 container using openh264 compression codec,
  • AVI(openh264 ffmpeg) : .avi container using openh264 compression codec,
  • AVI (MS mpeg4v3 ffmpeg) : .avi container using Microsoft's mpeg4 v3 compression codec,
  • AVI (mpeg4 ffmpeg) : .avi container using mpeg4 part 2 compression codec,
  • AVI (mjpeg ffmpeg) : .avi container using ffmpeg's mjpeg compression codec,
  • GIF (animated gif ffmpeg) : .gif animated file created with ffmpeg compressor,
  • FLV (flash video ffmpeg) : .flv video created with ffmpeg's flash screen video compressor,
  • WEBM (vp9 web video ffmpeg) : .webm video (for internet browsers) using google's VP9 codec,
  • WEBM (vp9 with transparency ffmpeg) : .webm video (for internet browsers) with transparency layer (stores the alpha channel like in png images) using google's VP9 codec.
• Quality: allows to set the quality (1..100) of the compression, this factor is translated to the bitrate used in the compression process.

Note: To avoid problems when trying to view an MPEG format animation in Microsoft Windows , it is strongly recommended that you use the Default menu to select a 'standard' size and press the Resize button. The graphical window will change to this 'standard' size. After finishing the animation, simply select Default on the menu and press the Resize button, and the previous size will be restored.

Note: AVI MS Video 1 uses a simple video compression algorithm, commonly supported by all video players. It is the recommended when the movie is to be included in presentations. To reduce the size of the animation file, the user can set the Utilities --> Variable -->AviMSVCUsePreviousInfo option, on the right buttons menu (see User Interface), to 0 or 1, and verify the created animations with their platform configuration.

Note: Macromedia Flas video is suitable for web sites.

Note: If you want to recompress the animation with another codec, like xvid, the AVI raw True Color is recommended, as it saves each frame without compression.

• Create a stereoscopic animation: Permits to create a stereoscopic animation which for each frame the left eye view and the right view are saved, i.e. effectively doubling the width of the frames. Special software video players, and hardware, are needed to view this animation correctly. Only AVI format is supported at the time.
• Default: This combobox permits to choose the resolution of the clip.