Animations Basics
Types of Animations
You can load two types of animations in Adams PostProcessor:
■Frequency-domain animations (referred to as normal-mode animations in Adams Vibration)
Note: | If you are using Adams Vibration with your Adams product, you can also use Adams PostProcessor to view forced-vibration animations. For more information, see the Adams Vibration online help. |
About Time-Domain Animations
When you perform a time-based simulation in an Adams product, such as a dynamics simulation in Adams View, Adams Solver creates one animation frame for every output step that you request in the simulation. For example, if you performed a simulation from 0.0 to 10.0 seconds and asked for output every 0.1 seconds, Adams Solver records data at 101 steps or frames. It creates a frame every tenth of a second for ten seconds plus one at time 0.0.
About Frequency-Domain Animations
Using Adams PostProcessor, you view your model oscillating at one of its natural frequencies. It cycles through the model deformation starting from the operating point of the requested natural frequency of the eigensolution. You can also see the effect of the damping on the model and display a table of eigenvalues.
When you perform a linear simulation of your model, Adams Solver linearizes the model at an operating point you specify and calculates the eigenvalues and eigenvectors. Adams PostProcessor then uses the information to display the animated deformed shape as predicted from the eigensolution. Because the linear solution eigenvectors are normalized, you can specify what the maximum amount the animated deformed shape should translate or rotate to get a meaningful animation or recognizable shape.
The animation frames correspond to pictures of the model interpolated between the maximum deformation in the positive and negative directions. The animation then cycles through the deformation of the model mode shape, from undeformed, to maximum deformed, to negative maximum deformed, and finally to the undeformed shape. This deformation is about the operating point of the requested natural mode of the eigensolution.
You can only animate periodic and aperiodic eigenmodes (that is, modes with an imaginary component of the eigenvalue = 0). However, when animating aperiodic modes, Adams PostProcessor warns you that the node has no oscillatory motion.
Loading Animations
To play an animation with Adams PostProcessor in Stand-alone mode, you must import the necessary files or open an existing notebook file (.bin) (see Notebooks) and then load the animation. If you are using Adams PostProcessor with an Adams product, such as Adams View, the necessary files are available in Adams PostProcessor after you run an Interactive Simulation or event. You only need to load the animation.
■For Time-domain animations, you must import a Graphics file (.gra) containing the animation. The graphics file is created by another Adams product, such as Adams View or Adams Solver.
■For Frequency-domain animations, you must import the Adams Solver dataset files (.adm) and Results file (.res) from a simulation.
To import animations:
■From the File menu, select Import, and then import the necessary files.
Learn more about Adding Data
To load an animation in a viewport:
■Right-click the background of a viewport (see Viewports), and select:
■Load Animation for a time-domain animation.
■Load Mode Shape Animation for a frequency-domain animation.
Playing Animations
When you play Time-domain animations, Adams PostProcessor plays every frame by default, as rapidly as possible. By default, it also continues to play through the animation, until you stop it. You can also set the animation to play only once or play first forwards and then backwards.
To play an animation:
To play an animation backwards:
■From the dashboard, select 
.
. To play an animation one frame at a time:
■From the dashboard, next to the slider, click the right and left arrow buttons.
To pause an animation:
■From the dashboard, select 
.
. To reset the animation to the beginning:
■From the dashboard, select 
.
. To set the animation play options, in the dashboard, set Loop to:
■Forever - Continuously loop through the animation.
■Once - Animate one time.
■Oscillate - First play the animation forwards and then play it backwards (for example, in a 100-frame animation, animate from 1 to 100 then back from 100 to 1).
■Oscillate forever - Oscillate forward and backward repeatedly.
Recording Animations
You can record an animation as a series of files, each containing one frame of the animation. Adams PostProcessor saves the files to your current working directory. Once you've recorded the animation, you can import the images into a third-party multimedia tool to create movies.
Before recording the animation, you can:
■Select the format: .avi, .tif, .jpg, .bmp, .mpg, .png, and .xpm (.avi format is only available on Windows).
■Define the area of the viewport to record (see Viewports).
■Set the prefix used to name the set of files. Adams PostProcessor appends a unique number to the prefix to form the name of each file. For example, if you specify a prefix of suspension, then each .tif file is named suspension_0001.tif, suspension_0002.tif, and so on. If you do not specify a name, the prefix is frame (for example, frame_001.tif).
■For .avi format, set the frame rate, turn off compression to improve the quality of the images, and set the interval between key frames. The default is compression with each key frame 5000 frames apart.
■For .mpg format, set options for ensuring the viewing in different playback programs.
Notes: | When a digital movie stream is encoded with compression, the pixels of each frame are evaluated against previous frames (those designated as key) and only pixels that changed are stored. For example, a movie of a car traveling along a road can have many pixels in the image background that do not change during the entire movie. Therefore, storing only the pixels that change allows for significant compression. In many cases, however, it can degrade movie quality, especially with movies where a large percentage of pixels are changing from frame-to-frame, such as with wireframe graphics. Because Adams PostProcessor lets you set the key frames rates, you control both the compression factor and the movie quality. Movies with many key frames will have high quality, while movies with few key frames, such as the default every 5000 frames, will have lower quality. For a typical 20-second .avi movie of a shaded Adams model, a key frame rate would be 12. |
To record an animation:
■From the dashboard, select 
, and then select 
.
, and then select . To set recording options:
1. From the dashboard, select Record.
2. Select the type of file format in which to save the frames.
3. In the Filename text box, enter the name you want Adams PostProcessor to use as the prefix of each file it creates.
4. To define an area of the viewport to record, select Frame Size, and then enter the size in the Width and Height text boxes. If the frame size exceeds the area currently on the screen, a warning message appears. You can fit the frame on the screen by resizing the dashboard, hiding toolbars, or increasing the size of the Adams PostProcessor window. See Resizing and Resetting Interface Objects.
5. If you selected:
■AVI format, set the number of frames per second, the compression, if any, and the interval between key frames.
Note: | When you set use compression when recording in AVI format, the playback program may restrict the size of image frames, usually to a multiple of 2 or 4. Therefore, your recording may appear cut off on one or more sides. The workaround is to change the animation window size before recording. |
■MPG format, set either of the following:
Compress the file using P frames - Turning off the compression using P frames ensures your movie plays in many playback programs, including as xanim. It results, however, in a much larger file (up to 4 times as large).
Round size to multiples of 16 - Some playback programs require the pixel height and width to be multiplies of 16. Turning this option on ensures that you movie plays in many playback programs.
Configuring Browser to Play MPEG Video
■In Windows, use Windows Media Player.
■For Linux try mtv or SMPEG or all the software derived from SMPEG.
Enter the command to launch your MPEG player. For example on an SGI, you would launch 'movieplayer' by entering the command:
/usr/sbin/movieplayer -nofork %s
Running MPEG Movie Using Windows Media Player
When running a MPEG movie using Windows Media Player in Internet Explorer, you may receive the following error message:
Internal MPEG Error, Code 3
You must be logged in as administrator when opening the .mpg file and running the Windows Media Player to install mpeg codedc, which is required to run .mpg files.
For more information, see the Microsoft Support Web pages.
Overlaying Animations
You can play one animation on top of another animation. To help you see the two animations, you can change their color and offset one from the other. You'll find this helpful when you want to visually compare the results of two or more modeling changes.
To overlay animations:
2. From the list, select the animations to be overlayed.
3. In the Offset text box, enter the amount by which to offset the animations. Enter the x, y, and z values. Adams PostProcessor applies the offset to each animation if you selected more than two animations to overlay.
4. In the Colors text box, enter the colors in which to display the overlaid animation.
Tips on Entering Object Names in Text Boxes.
Note: | Each animation you overlay must have the same beginning, increment and end times. |
Displaying Part Information
To display part information:
1. Press and hold down the Ctrl key.
2. Move the cursor over the animation.
Adams PostProcessor displays part information.