Changing and Optimizing Animation Playback Options

Playback options let you control the animation during playback and when using the time slider, thereby allowing you to optimize playback performance.

For example, you can choose to play back only the active items, not display CVs or lights during a playback, or to play back rendered images.

How to Use

1

Create an animation using any combination of the animation tools (for example, Anim > Set motion, or Animation > Set keyframe, Auto keyframe, or Action window).

2

Select Animation > Playback options to open the Playback Options window.

3

Change the parameters to suit your needs and then perform the playback again.

Playback Options Window

The Playback Options window contains several parameter sections to let you view your animation in different ways. To open a section, click the black down arrow to the left of the heading.

Play Blast Parameters

See Using the Play Blast window on page 83.

Toggling off the time slider during playback may improve the playblast rate by up to 200%. See Optimization Options Parameters on page 88.

Show Play Blast

If toggled ON, all animation previews occur in a Play Blast window, and only in this window. To play the animation in the application windows, toggle this option OFF.

Output Res

Represents the actual screen resolution for the Play Blast window.

Quality

If you change the Quality percentage, the Output Res updates to reflect the new resolution of the Play Blast window. If set to 100%, the resolution of the Play Blast window is the same as the active modeling window.

Zoom Factor

The default for Zoom Factor is 1. If you change it to a large number, the Play Blast window becomes that many times larger than the specified resolution by repeating pixels from the original resolution. For example, if the Zoom Factor is 2, each pixel from the original image is repeated twice (in each direction) to create a larger image.

Quick Render may be slow at the first pass because each frame has to render; however, the second and subsequent passes play back very fast rendered images.

Quick Render

If toggled ON (indicated by a check mark), the playback in the Play Blast window is in quick render mode.

The options that are set in the Render > Globals window and the Render > Quick render- option box are used by the quick render.

The advantage of compressing images in memory is that more frames of Play Blast animation can be stored because they take up less memory. However, the playback may be slightly slower with compressed images since before displaying each frame in the Play Blast window the image for that frame must be decompressed.

Compress

Determines how the Play Blast images are stored in memory. If the Compress option is toggled ON (indicated by a check mark), the images in memory are compressed. As a general rule, if a large number of frames are being played back, it is a good idea to use this option.

Using the Play Blast window

The Play Blast window provides very fast playback and can be helpful when performing motion testing, or previewing shader and light animation.

When you use the Play Blast window, the first time each frame in the animation is viewed in the playback, the animation is computed and displayed in a Play Blast window, and the image that is displayed in the window is retained in memory.

On the second and subsequent times that a frame of animation is viewed, the frame is viewed simply by displaying the image that is stored in memory for the current frame. This is generally much faster than an ordinary playback, where all the animation has to be recomputed for each frame.

To invoke the Play Blast window, ensure that the Show playblast option is ON.While a playback is in progress in the Play Blast window, you can pause it by pressing the stop icon in the Time Slider. This icon changes to three vertical bars, indicating that you are in pause mode.

While the playback is in pause mode, you can use any of the buttons on the time slider to change the current time. As long as you are in pause mode, the new frame is displayed using the images stored in memory. If the stop icon is pressed a second time, the Play Blast is completely stopped, and the Play Blast images are removed from memory. (If you want to view another frame, or start another playback, the Play Blast images must be re-computed for that new frame.)

The playblast window has two icons on its titlebar. On the left is the standard close icon, which you can use to close the playblast window and stop playback. On the right is the Output to Pix icon which you can use to turn .pix file output on and off.

The camera view is the same view as the current application window. For example, to do a Play Blast preview of the perspective window, click in the perspective window to make it current, and then invoke the playback. The aspect ratio of the current window is maintained in the Play Blast window. This means that if your current window is long and narrow, the image in the Play Blast window is long and narrow.

Sound Options Parameters

If you have a sound track available for the animation you are creating, you may want to synchronize your animation with the sound track. The Sound Options let you preview an animation synchronized with a digital audio track.

Soundfile

You can read in a digital audio track by either typing a file name into the Soundfile name box, or using the Data Browser by clicking Browse. The audio file can be in AIFF or AIFC format.

Sound Offset

Lets you specify the frame at which the sound track is to start playing.

Sound on

If toggled ON, sound is played during an animation playback. Turn sound OFF by clicking it again.

Pause Repeat

Specifies whether the current frame of sound is repeated continuously while in pause mode during Play Blast.

Synch To Playback

When this option is turned on, the sound will play back at the same rate as the animation. For example, if the animation's playback rate is 30 frames per second, one second of sound will take 30 frames to play back.

Turning this option off allows you to specify a separate playback frame for the sound. Giving a sound rate which is higher than the playback rate will result in the sound playing back more slowly (because it is playing back at the animation's slower rate). Conversely, a slower sound rate will result in the sound playing back more quickly.

Synch Rate

If Synch to Playback is OFF, then you can set a separate synch rate for the sound.

Audio Control

Opens the standard SGI audio control panel, allowing you to change the volume of the SGI's internal speaker.

Sound Editor

Opens the standard SGI sound editor program.

Animation Options Parameters

Objects

Click to the right of the heading to display the Objects menu.

• ALL - every animated object is animated during a playback.

• ACTIVE - only picked objects are animated during a playback.

A DAG node, CV, or camera can be picked using the Pick menu items. A shader, texture, or environment map is active if it is picked in the Multi-lister.

To display the Set Lister, select Windows > Sets > Set lister.

• ACTIVE SETS - only the items in the selected sets in the Set Lister are animated during a playback.

Parameters

Click to the right of the heading to display the Parameters menu.

• ALL - all channels of objects are animated during a playback.

To turn animation parameters on or off, use the Animation > Param control window, see page 19.

• GLOBAL/LOCAL - only channels whose parameters are turned on in the GLOBAL or LOCAL parameter control windows are animated during a playback.

Hierarchy

Click to the right of the heading to display the Hierarchy menu.

• NONE - only the selected objects are animated during a playback.

• ABOVE/BELOW - all selected objects, and all animated objects above or below the selected objects are animated during a playback.

• BOTH - includes both ABOVE and BELOW.

Repeat

Click to the right of the heading to display the Repeat menu.

• ONCE - the range of animation plays back once, then stops.

• OSCILLATE - the animation alternates between playing in a forward and reverse direction until you stop the animation.

• LOOP - the animation plays over and over in the same direction (in whichever direction the playback was initiated).

To create a pose animation sequence, see Anim > Pose animation on page 208.

Pose Animation

If set to ON, playback only displays the frames in the pose animation sequence.

These images can be previewed quickly using the Animation > Flipbook menu item.

Output to Pix

If set to ON, then the next time a playback is invoked, the animation will be saved to .pix files in the .pix directory of your current project.

The camera view that is used for the images is the same view as the current application window. To specify the window to be used for creating pix files, click in it before starting a playback.

The pix files created are snapshots of the screen. For best results, make sure no other windows are covering the current application window.

After you have entered the name of a file, the playback starts. The first time through the playback, a pix file is saved for each frame. After the playback has run once through all the animation in the given range, the Output to Pix option automatically turns OFF, and playback continues without saving pix files.

It is recommended that you set the Sync Rate (fps) in the Time Slider to 0.0 when using the Output to Pix option. If you use a non-zero frame rate, the resulting pix file animation could be very jerky.

Output Particles

If set to ON when starting playback, you're asked for the psys directory, where the particles are saved out for one cycle of playback. You can also turn this option on during playback.

Output Video

Output to Pix is also used by Alias Raycaster and Raytracer.

If set to ON, the next time a playback is invoked it is recorded to an external device. You can configure which device is used.

Optimization

If Optimization is OFF, the playback is not optimized. In this case, the Optimization Options heading is not displayed since it does not apply.

If Optimization is ON, any playback (invoked from the control panel, from Animation > Playback, or from the Time Slider) uses optimization options to increase the speed of the playback. Expand the Optimization Options section to set these options.

Optimization Options Parameters

If a check mark is displayed next to an option it means that an item is optimized (not displayed) during a playback.

If the Optimization option in the Animation Options window is set to ON, all animation playbacks are optimized using the following optimization options.

CVs

If checked, no CVs are displayed during playback.

Hulls

If checked, no hulls are displayed during playback.

Grid

If checked, the grids in the application windows are not displayed during playback.

Title Bar

If checked, the title bar and window icons of the application windows are not displayed during playback.

Lights

If checked, no lights are displayed during playback.

Cameras

If checked, no cameras are displayed during playback.

This is useful if a window is in toggle shade mode (see Display > Tgl shade).

Model

If checked, no geometry is displayed during playback.

See the Multi-lister section in Rendering in Alias.

MultiLister

If checked, shader animation does not occur in the Multi-lister.

If not checked, the animated shader balls are updated at each frame. For a faster playback of just one shader ball, use the animated shader icon next to the shader ball name.

Time Slider

If checked, the time slider and frame counter in the Alias window will not be updated during playback, but will update once playback is over. This optimization alone can double the speed of many Play Blasts, but has minimal effect on most normal playbacks. Note that the frame marker can still be dragged and all of the frame control buttons still operate normally.

Pivots

If checked, no pivots are rendered during playback.

Skeletons

If checked, skeleton bones are not displayed during playback.

Cluster Pivots

If checked, cluster pivots are not rendered during playback.

Display Windows

Specifies which windows should remain open during playback. (The more windows that are open, the slower the playback.)

Click to the right of the heading to display the Display Windows menu.

• ALL - any window that is currently open remains open, including any opened editor.

• ALL MODELING - only the modeling windows remain open and all editors are closed.

• ACTIVE MODELING - only the current modeling window remains open.

• QUICK RENDER - only the current quick render window remains open. If one is not currently open, a quick render window is created.

After the playback is finished, all windows that were closed during the playback are reopened.

Output Filename Extensions Parameters

The Output Filename Extensions options are used when the Output to Pix option is set to ON in the Animation Options window, or when rendering an animation sequence with Animation turned ON in Render > Globals.

The names of the pix files that will be saved consist of a base name, which the system prompts you for, a period ("."), and then a numbered extension indicating the place in the sequence of pix files that this file represents (for example: filename.1, filename.2, filename.3, etc.) This number, does not necessarily correspond to the frame number. It is computed using the three options in this window.

Start

This is the number that will be used as the file name extension for the first frame of animation saved to a pix file.

By

This is the amount by which the file name extension number is incremented.

Extension padding.

This is the minimum number of digits in the file extension. If the file name extension number has fewer digits than specified by this option, the number is padded with 0's to the left.

For example, assume:

• the Min, Max, and By values in the Time Slider panel are currently 90, 120, and 3

• the Start, By, and Num of Digits options in this window are set to 1, 1, and 2

• when you invoke a playback with Output to Pix set to ON and are prompted for a base name, you type anim

The pix files that are generated have the names anim.01, anim.02, anim.03, etc. up to anim.11.