Using the Animation Assistant New for Ver. 4.0

Step 1: Define Output Properties

The Animation Assistant allows you to quickly and easily create your own lunar animations. You can create clips containing multiple frames in a matter of minutes, because you generally only have to provide 2 key frames, and the Animation Assistant does the rest.

When you click Animation Assistant in the Tools Menu, or click the Film Strip Icon on the Tool Bar, the following dialog box opens.

Step 1 involves defining the output properties for your animation. In this step you give your animation a Name and enter the Image Dimensions for your animated sequence. First, type a name for your animation into the Name Box. Next, decide on the number of horizontal and vertical pixels for your animation frames.

If you were to use the numbers appearing in the Image Dimensions Box when the dialog is first opened, you would create a full screen animation. Since that image scale is very large, it is not recommended for use under normal circumstances. Instead, we suggest that you start with an image measuring 400 X 400, since it produces a good size animated clip that also happens to fit perfectly into the Playback Window.

The disk space required to store a completed animated clip is dependent upon two factors: 1. The image dimensions you select. 2. The number of images used in your animated sequence. The more images you use to create the animation, the smoother the animation clip will appear. Of course, the file size of the completed animation clip also increases with each frame that you add, so make wise trade-offs between the two.

Animation clips are created by utilizing the managers available within the program. Let’s say for example that you want to create an animation where you zoom in to the crater, Plato. You would type a title for your clip, such as, Zoom to Plato, in the Name Box, and enter the value 400 for both the Horizontal and Vertical dimensions in the Image Dimensions Box, (as shown below)

Once done, you can click the Next Button (as shown), and continue to Step 2