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Previewing Animation in a Flipbook

After you have captured animation, you can view it as a flipbook. Unlike animation played back using the Playback panel, a flipbook always plays back at the defined frame rate, provided you have enough memory for the cached images.

There are three ways to view a flipbook:

• Using the standalone flipbook—see this section.

• Using the media player native to the file format you choose.

• Using the Image Clip Viewer—choose Image Clip Viewer from a viewport’s Views menu.

You can export flipbooks in a variety of standard formats, such as AVI and QuickTime (see Exporting a Flipbook).

Loading Animation in the Flipbook

You can use the standalone flipbook to view cached images as a flipbook. The standalone flipbook is useful for viewing high-resolution images that use a lot of RAM. You can launch the standalone (flip.exe) from the Softimage Products > XSI program menu, a command prompt window or Linux shell, or from within the XSI interface.

To launch the standalone flipbook from outside XSI

Do either of the following:

• Choose Flipbook from the Start > Softimage Products > XSI program menu.

or

1. In a command prompt window or Linux shell, go to the XSI program’s bin directory.

2. Type flip at the command prompt to open the flipbook window.

3. Choose Help > Command Line Options to see the syntax and options available.

You can also type flip -h at the command prompt to display the list of the options available to run the flipbook from the command line.

To launch the standalone flipbook from within XSI

1. Choose Playback > Flipbook from the Playback menu at the bottom of the XSI window.

2. In the Open Images dialog box that appears, set the options as you like.

For a description of each option, click the Help button in the dialog box.

3. Click OK to load the image sequence and open the flipbook window.

The flipbook window is resized if the loaded image is larger than the current size.

• If you’re rendering a sequence, you can quickly check it in the flipbook by clicking the Launch Flipbook button on the Output page of the Render Options property editor (choose Render > Render Options from the Render toolbar). • You can open the Open Images dialog box later by choosing File > Open Images or pressing Ctrl+o in the flipbook. If you’re constantly making changes and testing the same image sequence, leave the flipbook open and press Ctrl+o and then Enter to reload the sequence. This way, all the settings in the dialog box stay the same.

Creating a Shortcut for the Flipbook

To set up a shortcut for the flipbook

1. Copy the file xsi.bat in the XSI\Application\bin folder (or create a new batch file) and call it flip.bat.

2. Edit the flip.bat file and replace xsi.exe in the second line to flip.exe so that the file looks something like this:

@echo off
call "C:\Softimage\XSI\Application\bin\setenv.bat"
start "" "C:\Softimage\XSI\Application\bin\flip.exe" "%1" "%2" "%3" "%4" "%5" "%6" "%7" "%8" "%9"

3. Drag the flip.bat file onto your desktop as a shortcut.

Setting Up the Flipbook View

In the flipbook window, you can set up how you want the images to appear using commands from its View menu:

• Display different RGB or alpha channels using the commands in the View > Channel menu. Press the r, g, b, a, and c (all channels) keys to display the respective channels.

• Set the zoom factors using the options in the View > Zoom menu.

• You can have non-square pixels appear correctly on the computer monitor, which has square pixels by choosing View > Correct Aspect Ratio. For example, NTSC images have a pixel ratio of 0.9, meaning the pixels are not square.

To set the flipbook’s background color

• Choose View > Background Color to open the color property editor in which you can set the color.

To set the flipbook’s display options

• Choose View > Display Options to open the Display Options dialog box, from which you can set the following options:

- Image Pixel Ratio overrides the flipbook’s pixel ratio for the current image.

- OpenEXR/HDR Settings > Exposure: if the image format is .hdr or .exr, this setting offsets the exposure to brighten or darken the image.

The exposure value is measured in f-stops, so a value of 0 is the image’s default exposure, while non-zero values offset the default by the specified number of f-stops in either direction.

- OpenEXR/HDR Settings > Display Gamma: if the image format is .hdr or .exr, this setting performs a gamma correction for display purposes only.

Playing the Flipbook

After you’ve loaded the images and set up the flipbook, you can play back the images using the playback controls, as well as set up and adjust the playback rate.

When you play back the flipbook, the current frame number is shown below the image, at the right edge of the window.

To set the playback rate

• Choose Tools > Rate (NTSC, PAL, FILM, etc.) or press Ctrl+r.

• You can also choose View > Play Real-time or press t to display the images in realtime.

To adjust the playback rate

You can adjust the playback rate by 1 fps (frame per second) increments within the range of 24 and 30 fps.

• Choose Tools > Increase Rate or press + (plus) on the number pad to increase one frame per second.

• Choose Tools > Decrease Rate or press - (minus) on the number pad to decrease one frame per second.

To play the animation

These controls are the same as in the Playback panel in the main XSI window, as described in Using the Playback Controls.

• Click the play icon on the flipbook’s playback controls or press the up arrow key.

You can also move forward or backward frame by frame, go to the first or last frame, stop, and loop the playback (loop is automatically selected).

To play the animation in ping-pong style

1. Choose View > Ping Pong or press p. This changes the directions of playback at the ends of a looped sequence.

2. Click the loop icon in the flipbook’s playback controls.

3. Play the sequence: at the first and last frame, the sequence changes directions.

4. To stop the playback, press the space bar.

To pan in the flipbook

• Click+drag across the view area. This pans the image when it is bigger than the display area.

To go to a particular frame

• Choose Tools > Go to Frame or press Ctrl+g in the flipbook window.

To change the playback range

• Use the range control below the timeline:

- Click+drag either end to change the start/end frames.

- Click+drag in its middle to slide the time range.

- Double-click in it to reset it back to the entire range.

To clear the flipbook window of the current cached images

• Choose File > Clear Flipbook.

To close the flipbook window

• Choose File > Exit or press Alt+F4.

Exporting a Flipbook

You can export a flipbook using a number of file formats, as shown below.

Before you export a flipbook, make sure that you have enough room on the disk to where you’re exporting. A warning message will not be displayed if you run out of space.

To export a flipbook

1. In the flipbook window, load the sequence you want to export.

2. Choose File > Export in the flipbook’s command bar or press Ctrl+e.

3. In the Export dialog box, specify the File name you want to export and also the Source Range of frames to export.

4. Select the File Type in which you want to export the file. The list below shows the possible export formats supported.

5. Set these optional parameters:

- If you have a specific compressor (coder-decoder) you want to use for movie files, click the Codec button.

- To export an accompanying Audio File with the images, click the (…) button to open the browser and search for the audio file.

- If you want to pad the numbers to allow you to match up image sequences, specify the number of frames in the Number Padding list. The default syntax is [fn].#[ext] where fn is the base file name, ext is the file format extension, and # is the frame number.

6. In the Destination Frame Offset text box, specify the number of frames to add to the destination images. For example, you can offset the image sequence before using another tool.

7. Click OK.

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