Timeline Bar

The Timeline Bar plays through all animation on the model. It’s also where you can manage settings for growth and wind.

Use the controls along the top row to specify the length of the animation in frames ("End") and select the current frame with the slider. Stop, play, and loop are provided for controlling the animation.

Current

Control the current frame in the window:

• Rewind to the beginning
• Step back one frame
• Set the current frame in the text box
• Step forward one frame
• Fast forward to the end of the animation

Playback

Use the group in this window to control the frame rate of playback in the window. This frame rate will apply to both wind and growth. If the model can't compute or draw fast enough to achieve the selected frame rate, the Modeler will skip frames to keep the overall sequence close to the correct length. Use "all frames" to force each frame to show regardless of compute/draw speed.

Note

This setting applies only to playback in the window. All exporting is based on frames and the ultimate timing/speed will be controlled by the target DCC application.

Wind

Wind animation in the window typically runs continuously when wind is enabled on the Fan object. Previewing wind in this manner makes it easier to tune and test; however, it does not give you control of wind strength during the export process. Enabling "Wind" on the Timeline Bar overrides the normal wind preview and puts it under control of the Timeline and the corresponding wind strength curve. The curve represents wind strength as a function of the percentage through the animation represented by the current frame.

Use this method of wind control to explicitly animate wind strength for exporting.

Note

You can still edit wind parameters by selecting the Fan in when Timeline wind is enabled. Gusting, wind strength, and response times from the normal mode will be overridden by the curve, but all other wind properties still function.

Growth

Check this box to enable animated growth. Scrub the timeline to preview the growth animation based on the current growth property settings on each generator and the values entered for the properties in this group:

Speed

This value sets the overall speed of the growth. All of the generator's speed properties are scalars applied to this value.

Curve

Use the curve to accelerate or decelerate certain areas of the growth animation. A linear curve from 0 to 1 means the timeline sets the growth time directly. Keep in mind that individual generators can also use curves to control their growth speeds directly.

Wizard

Press this button to run the Growth Wizard.