User's Guide

Virtualwind   →   Monitor Data Visualization   →   Animation

Animation

If you set the output mode of the monitor to ANIMATION, you can play animation on your chosen quantities. Animation can be performed on both the quantity level and the Actor level (one quantity can have multiple Actors). To do this, mouse over the interested quantity or actor in the visualization tree and right mouse click. Then select Create Animator from the pop-up menu. A player will be generated for this particular quantity or Actor.

Animator

The generated animator will appear in the visualization tree under the corresponding quantity or actor. If you right mouse click the quantity or actor and select Show Animator PASW (PASW stands for Property And State Widget) from the pop up menu, an Animation Controls window will appear giving you full control over the playing of the animation.


You have the option to play the animation continuously, step forward or backward, or go directly to the beginning or end. The slide bar along the top of the window indicates the current snapshot it is playing relative to the total number of snapshots.

Saving the animation to an AVI file

Through the Animation Controls window you can also save the animation to the hard disk as a video clip (in the AVI file format) by using the "Recording" button. Each time you click this button a window will appear asking you to specify a name for the AVI file. To save the animation, click on the "Recording" button and then play the animation – whatever happens in the viewport will be captured and saved in the AVI file. Click the "Recording" button again to stop recording.

You can then play the generated video clip with any media player that supports the AVI format. Note that you can only do this after you have hit the "Recording" button a second time to stop the recording. Otherwise, an error message similar to the following will appear: "This file is currently being accessed by another process" since you are trying to play the AVI file while the "Recording" button is still on.

There are three additional options in the "Recording Controls" portion of the Animation Controls window. They are as follows:

"Off-screen" checkbox: When the "Off-screen" checkbox is checked, Virtualwind stops updating the Viewport and instead renders the animation in the background (i.e. off-screen). This helps to speed up the recording time. It also prevents Virtualwind from capturing any windows displayed on top of the viewport. This option has no effect on the resulting AVI.

"Frame Rate" value: The "Frame Rate" determines the playback speed of the AVI. It is specified in frames per second (fps). A value of 1 means that each Virtualwind snapshot is displayed for one second, so a sixty-frame simulation will result in a one-minute AVI. A value of 10 means that ten snapshots will be displayed every second, so the same sixty-frame simulation will result in a six-second AVI. The quality of the resulting AVI is not affected by the value of the Frame Rate.

"Quality" slider: The "Quality" slider controls the quality of the recording. There are three settings: High, Medium, and Low. Higher-quality settings require longer recording times. The "High" setting will generate an AVI with a quality similar to what you see in the Virtualwind viewport, but it will also take the longest to generate; the "Low" setting records the AVI faster, but sacrifices quality to achieve this.