Particles

Simulation and recording

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Section contents

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simulate and simulation

The process of particle animation begins by simulating. During simulation, particle systems will move according to their defined animations (when animated within GIG). The particles inside the particle systems will move according to their parameters. The parameters can be interactively changed during simulation.
Note
To speed up the simulation, close all windows except for the viewing window.

record

Changes in parameters can be recorded. This results in timecurves which define the animation of a parameter. These timecurves can be edited afterwards to fine tune the simulation.

To record interactive changes in parameters during a simulation, press record. The simulation will automatically start at the specified starting frame number (left animation bar input box). Now any changes made in the parameter settings will result in a timecurve for each parameter.

Click record again to stop the simulation.
After recording has been stopped, the color of the buttons of the changed parameters will change, indicating that a timecurve is available for that particular parameter.

Example:

mean

When clicking on mean, the corresponding time curve will be displayed.

variance

variance does not have a time curve in the above example; otherwise the button would have been highlighted.

close

Removes the field or parameter box from the working area.

timecurve

The timecurve can be edited after clicking on mean or variance for particle parameters, or power, gradation, etc., for field parameters.

Remember that these buttons will be active only if you have changed a parameter during a simulation which started after record was pressed.

After clicking on an active input box button, a timecurve window will appear on screen.

move | add | delete
Points in the timecurve can be moved, added, or deleted. Also, it is possible to delete the complete time curve.

accept
After changes have been made to the timecurve, click on accept to pass the changes to the simulation. If you now simulate again, the changed timecurve will be used during simulation.

confirm | cancel
Select confirm or cancel to close the timecurve window.

When selecting save ani in the general menu of GIG, the complete model, including the timecurves for the parameters, will be saved.

sample by This parameter will change the sampling rate for the timecurves when using record.

play

Click the play button to start the animation. Only key-framed animation is performed, including inverse kinematics, but excluding dynamic systems.

If a flipbook recording of wireframe images has been made, play is replaced with play recording. The recorded images will be displayed instead of doing the real animation. In this case, the frames/sec value controls the speed with which the images are played back.

If images are recorded, the simulate button cannot be used.

frames/sec

Sets the speed for playing flipbook recorded images. Click the frames/sec input box to activate it. It is now possible to change the number of frames displayed per second during display of wireframe flipbook images. This works only if images have been recorded with the record flipbook button in one of the camera control pop-up windows.

If the speed is set faster than your computer can manage, it will begin skipping images to reach the correct frames/sec.

options

Click the options button to activate it. The menu will change some buttons to save, get, and reset the screen lay-out. There is also a button to create extra cameras. Click close to restore the menu to the default buttons. Camera windows can be deleted with standard window options (e.g., alt + right mouse button in an SGI environment).

See also
get ani, save ani

timeline

See animation timeline in Organic

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