RockPlot3D | Isosurface | Animate Isolevel
Use this program to create an animated view of your isosurface image, displaying increasing or decreasing isolevels in a sequential fashion. You can define the starting and ending isolevel, and increments.
This option is only available for isosurface diagrams. It is accessible as a right-click option.
Menu Options
Step-by-Step Summary
Menu Options
- Start: Enter here the starting isolevel for the animation. This can be a high or low level. You can use the Reset button to automatically reset this prompt to the lowest value in the model.
- Finish: Enter here the ending isolevel for the animation. This can be greater than or less than the starting value.
- Increment: In this prompt, enter the G value increments at which the isosurface is to be redrawn and captured in the animation. If the starting isolevel is greater than the ending isolevel, the increments will be negative. For your reference, the number of frames currently represented will be displayed. (Start-to-Finish range / Increments)
- Output: (displayed after you click the Save AVI button on the first window)
- Frames per second: This setting determines how fast the animation should be. The default is 2 frames per second. Increase this value to make the process go faster (more frames per second), decrease this value to make it go more slowly.
- Create AVI File: Click on the button to enter the name to be assigned to the AVI file to be generated. The default file name extension is AVI.
- Play Animation: Check this box for the resulting AVI file to be loaded into the default player on your computer.
- Create Frames: Choose this option if the program is to export individual frames as BMP images for later assembly into an animation with other movie-making software applications.
- Output Folder: Browse for the folder where the BMP images are to be stored.
- Frame Prefix: The frame images will be numbered automatically and sequentially, as 0001.bmp, 0002.bmp, and so on. If you'd like any characters stored in front of the numbers, enter that here. For example, entry of a prefix of "plume" would generate file names "plume0001.bmp," "plume0002.bmp," etc.
- Pixel Format: Choose the color depth for the output frames. 24 bit color will generate better-looking images but larger files.
Step-by-Step Summary
- If necessary, create or open the isosurface view that you wish to export. (See Opening a RockPlot3D View.)
- Adjust the image view to your satisfaction. This includes, but is not limited to, the rotation angle, zoomed-in state, vertical exaggeration, and window size. The animation view will look like the RockPlot3D view you have established.
- Right-click on the isosurface’s name or icon
in the Data pane, and choose the Animate Isolevel command from the pop-up menu.
- Enter the start-increment-finish settings, described above.
- Click the Save AVI button to continue.
- Enter the output settings, and click OK.
The program will build the output frames per the settings you've requested, in background memory.
! This process can be slow, depending on the resolution of your model and the number of frames requested.
- Prior to saving the AVI file, the program will prompt you for the desired CODEC (COmpress/DECompress) technique to reduce the size of the resulting AVI.
- Which to choose? The most reliable (and best-quality) option is to choose Uncompressed. However, the compression options can greatly help to reduce the output file size for large videos.
- The best CODEC to use may depend on your computer's setup - some may work better than others and some may not be supported at all. You can see a list of Video CODECs installed on your computer by starting Windows Media Player, choose Help / About, and click on the Technical Support Information link.
The completed movie will be stored under the requested AVI file name. If you've requested that the animation be played automatically, the movie will be loaded into your default video player.
The AVI file cannot be read into RockPlot3D. It can be viewed using Windows Media Player or other AVI-reading software program.
Back to Exporting Images
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