Menus > Animation > Editors > Playback options

Animation > Editors > Playback options

Control animation during playback to optimize playback performance.

See View individual frames of animation

For example, you can choose to play back only the active items, not display CVs or lights during a playback, or to play back rendered images.

> Playback Options window

The Playback Options window contains several parameter sections to let you view your animation in different ways. To open a section, click the black down arrow to the left of the heading.

To open a section, click the black down arrow to the left of the heading.

> Play Blast parameters

For more information about play blast, see Use the Play Blast window. Toggling off the time slider during playback may improve the playblast rate by up to 200%.

Show Play Blast

If toggled ON, all animation previews occur in a Play Blast window, and only in this window. To play the animation in the application windows, toggle this option OFF.

Output Res

Represents the actual screen resolution for the Play Blast window.

You can only change the X resolution because the Y resolution is computed so that the aspect ratio of the Play Blast window is the same as the active modeling window.

Quality

If you change the Quality percentage, the Output Res updates to reflect the new resolution of the Play Blast window. If set to 100%, the resolution of the Play Blast window is the same as the active modeling window.

Zoom Factor

The default for Zoom Factor is 1. If you change it to a large number, the Play Blast window becomes that many times larger than the specified resolution by repeating pixels from the original resolution. For example, if the Zoom Factor is 2, each pixel from the original image is repeated twice (in each direction) to create a larger image.

Compress

Determines how the Play Blast images are stored in memory. If the Compress option is toggled ON (indicated by a check mark), the images in memory are compressed. As a general rule, if a large number of frames are being played back, it is a good idea to use this option.

The advantage of compressing images in memory is that more frames of Play Blast animation can be stored because they take up less memory.

However, the playback may be slightly slower with compressed images since before displaying each frame in the Play Blast window the image for that frame must be decompressed.

> Animation Options parameters

Objects

Click to the right of the heading to display the Objects menu.

ALL - every animated object is animated during a playback.
ACTIVE - only picked objects are animated during a playback. A DAG node, CV, or camera can be picked using the Pick menu items. A shader, texture, or environment map is active if it is picked in the Multi-lister.
ACTIVE SETS - only the items in the selected sets in the Set Lister are animated during a playback. Choose Animation > Editors > Set lister to display the Set Lister.

Parameters

Click to the right of the heading to display the Parameters menu.

ALL - all channels of objects are animated during a playback.
GLOBAL/LOCAL - only channels whose parameters are turned on in the GLOBAL or LOCAL parameter control windows are animated during a playback.

To turn animation parameters on or off, use Animation > Editors > Param control .

Hierarchy

This menu is only available when either ACTIVE or ACTIVE SETS is chosen from the Objects menu.

None - Keyframes are set only for the selected objects.
Above - Keyframes are set for the selected objects and all objects in the hierarchies above them.
Below - Keyframes are set for the selected objects and all objects in the hierarchies below them.

If Hierarchy is set to Below, and if there is geometry somewhere below a picked DAG node, keyframes are set for all the DAG nodes below the picked DAG node, but not for any of the CVs. To set keyframes for CVs, select the CVs of the geometry you want to animate and set keyframes for them separately.

Both - Includes both Above and Below.

In the case of DAG nodes, CVs, polyset vertices, image planes, and cameras, the hierarchy refers to the hierarchy as represented in the SBD window. For shaders, textures, and lights, it refers to the implicit hierarchy in the Multi-lister window.

Repeat

Click to the right of the heading to display the Repeat menu.

ONCE - the range of animation plays back once, then stops.
OSCILLATE - the animation alternates between playing in a forward and reverse direction until you stop the animation.
LOOP - the animation plays over and over in the same direction (in whichever direction the playback was initiated).

Pose Animation

If set to ON, playback only displays the frames in the pose animation sequence. To create a pose animation sequence, see Animation > Tools > Pose animation .

Output to Pix

If set to ON, then the next time a playback is invoked, the animation will be saved to .pix files in the .pix directory of your current project.

You can quickly preview these images from Animation > Show > FCheck .

During a Play Blast, you can turn pix output on and off by clicking the Output to Pix button on the Play Blast window's titlebar.

The camera view that is used for the images is the same view as the current application window. To specify the window to be used for creating pix files, click in it before starting a playback.

The pix files created are snapshots of the screen. For best results, make sure no other windows are covering the current application window.

After you have entered the name of a file, the playback starts. The first time through the playback, a pix file is saved for each frame. After the playback has run once through all the animation in the given range, the Output to Pix option automatically turns OFF, and playback continues without saving pix files.

It is recommended that you set the Sync Rate (fps) in the Time Slider to 0.0 when using the Output to Pix option. If you use a non-zero frame rate, the resulting pix file animation could be very jerky.

Optimization

If Optimization is OFF, the playback is not optimized. In this case, the Optimization Options heading is not displayed since it does not apply.

If Optimization is ON, any playback (invoked from the control panel, from Animation > Show > Playback , or from the Time Slider) uses optimization options to increase the speed of the playback. Expand the Optimization Options section to set these options.

> Optimization Options parameters

If the Optimization option in the Animation Options window is set to ON, all animation playbacks are optimized using the following optimization options.

If a check mark is displayed next to an option it means that an item is optimized (not displayed) during a playback.

CVs

If checked, no CVs are displayed during playback.

Hulls

If checked, no hulls are displayed during playback.

Grid

If checked, the grids in the application windows are not displayed during playback.

Title Bar

If checked, the title bar and window icons of the application windows are not displayed during playback.

Lights

If checked, no lights are displayed during playback.

Cameras

If checked, no cameras are displayed during playback.

Model

If checked, no geometry is displayed during playback.

This is useful if a window is in toggle shade mode (see WindowDisplay > Hardware Shade ).

MultiLister

If checked, shader animation does not occur in the Multi-lister.

If not checked, the animated shader balls are updated at each frame. For a faster playback of just one shader ball, use the animated shader icon next to the shader ball name.

Time Slider

If checked, the time slider and frame counter in the AliasStudio window will not be updated during playback, but will update once playback is over. This optimization alone can double the speed of many Play Blasts, but has minimal effect on most normal playbacks. Note that the frame marker can still be dragged and all of the frame control buttons still operate normally.

Pivots

If checked, no pivots are rendered during playback.

Skeletons

If checked, skeleton bones are not displayed during playback.

Cluster Pivots

If checked, cluster pivots are not rendered during playback.

WindowDisplay > Toggles > Pivots overrides the pivot settings in the Playback Options Optimization window. If you have selected WindowDisplay > Toggles > Pivots , no pivots will be rendered during playback even if you uncheck Pivots or Cluster Pivots in the Playback Options Optimization window.

Display Windows

Specifies which windows should remain open during playback. (The more windows that are open, the slower the playback.)

Click to the right of the heading to display the Display Windows menu.

ALL - any window that is currently open remains open, including any opened editor.
ALL MODELING - only the modeling windows remain open and all editors are closed.
ACTIVE MODELING - only the current modeling window remains open.
QUICK RENDER - only the current quick render window remains open. If one is not currently open, a quick render window is created.

After the playback is finished, all windows that were closed during the playback are reopened.

SBD windows that are open will always close during a playback no matter what the Display Windows option is set to.

> Output Filename Extensions parameters

The Output Filename Extensions options are used when the Output to Pix option is set to ON in the Animation Options window or when you are rendering an animation sequence with Animation turned ON in Render > Globals .

The names of the pix files that will be saved consist of a base name, which the system prompts you for, a period ("."), and then a numbered extension indicating the place in the sequence of pix files that this file represents (for example: filename.1, filename.2, filename.3, etc.) This number, does not necessarily correspond to the frame number. It is computed using the three options in this window.

Start

This is the number that will be used as the file name extension for the first frame of animation saved to a pix file.

By

This is the amount by which the file name extension number is incremented.

Extension padding

This is the minimum number of digits in the file extension. If the file name extension number has fewer digits than specified by this option, the number is padded with 0's to the left.

For example, assume:

the Min, Max, and By values in the Time Slider panel are currently 90, 120, and 3
the Start, By, and Num of Digits options in this window are set to 1, 1, and 2
when you invoke a playback with Output to Pix set to ON and are prompted for a base name, you type anim
The pix files that are generated have the names anim.01, anim.02, anim.03, etc. up to anim.11.