DEM Tutorial
Renato! Sigmon
Part 5 of 6
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5 - A SNEAK PREVIEW (ANIMATION)

Now that you have created (and saved!) your Grand Canyon scene, complete with an animation timeline, it's time to try out Bryce 4's new "Preview Animation" feature. It's available in both Sky Lab and in the main work area. The Preview Animation feature quickly renders a thumbnail preview of your animation. In the main work area, it also generates a frame-by-frame storyboard.

To see a preview animation in Sky Lab, just click "Play" in the VCR controls. To view a preview animation in the main work area, click the "Preview Animation" filmstrip icon at the bottom of the screen (just to the left of the VCR controls). Watch your animation render frame-by-frame in the work area.

When the Preview Animation is finished rendering, it will play back once in the Nano Preview window. To watch it again, simply click the Play button in the VCR controls, or the Preview Animation icon. If you want to see what's going on in one particular frame of your animation, just double click its storyboard frame and you'll instantly go to the scene composition for that frame.

Make any changes you like, save, and select the Preview Animation icon again. The preview animation will re-render. When you're sure you're happy with the animation, save your scene file and move on to the next step... rendering a grand canyon animation!

6 - RENDER UNTO QUICKTIME...

Now it's time to render your animation. Below are the render settings I chose when rendering the tutorial movie.

Because rendering takes so much of your computer's resources, you may want to change some of the values. For instance, turning off antialiasing will greatly reduce your render time. So will turning off "Volumetric World", in the "Atmosphere" palette of the Sky Lab. Changing the Document Size up or down will also have a significant effect on render time and final file size.

To give you an idea of how quickly or slowly your animation may render depending on the settings you choose, here's the approximate render times for the following render settings, using a Mac G3/400. Of course, your mileage may vary.

(Render Resolution 160x120)

Antialias	Volumetric World	Render Time
Normal	On	approx. 4.5 hrs
Off	On	approx. 1 hr 4 min
Normal	Off	approx. 35 minutes
Off	Off	approx. 5 min

RENDER SETTINGS FOR TUTORIAL MOVIE:

DOCUMENT SETUP (File > Document Setup)

Document Size: Standard, 1:0.25 (160x120)

Antialiasing: On, Normal

ANIMATION SETUP (File > Animation Setup)

Current: 0.00

Duration: 8.00

frames per second: 15

Once your Render Settings are set, all you need to do is tell Bryce where to save the animation, what to call it, and set Bryce to rendering!

Select File > Render Animation. A dialog box will appear; click "Set" to tell Bryce where to save your Grand Canyon animation, and what to call it.

At this point you can click the check to accept your file name and location, and start the render; or if you wish, you can change the codec and other attributes of the animation file, by clicking "Edit".