26.16.1 Defining an Animation Sequence

You can use the Solution Animation dialog box (Figure  26.16.1) to create an animation sequence and indicate how often each frame of the sequence should be created. The Animation Sequence dialog box (Figure  26.16.2), opened from the Solution Animation dialog box, allows you to define what each sequence displays (e.g., contours or vectors of a particular variable), where it is displayed, and how each frame is stored.

You will begin the animation sequence definition in the Solution Animation dialog box (Figure  26.16.1).

Calculation Activities (Solution Animations) Create/Edit...

Figure 26.16.1: The Solution Animation Dialog Box

The procedure is as follows:

1.   Increase the Animation Sequences value to the number of animation sequences you wish to specify. As this value is increased, additional sequence entries in the dialog box will become editable. For each sequence, you will perform the following steps.

2.   Enter a name for the sequence under the Name heading. This name will be used to identify the sequence in the Playback dialog box, where you can play back the animation sequences that you have defined or read in. This name will also be used as the prefix for the file names if you save the sequence frames to disk.

3.   Indicate how often you want to create a new frame in the sequence by setting the interval under Every and selecting Iteration or Time Step in the drop-down list below When. ( Time Step is a valid choice only if you are calculating unsteady flow.) For example, to create a frame every 10 time steps, you would enter 10 under Every and select Time Step under When.

4.   Click the Define... button to open the Animation Sequence dialog box (Figure  26.16.2).

Figure 26.16.2: The Animation Sequence Dialog Box

5.   Define the Sequence Parameters in the Animation Sequence dialog box.

(a)   Specify whether you want ANSYS FLUENT to save the animation sequence frames in memory or on your computer's hard drive. To save the animation sequence in memory, select In Memory under Storage Type. To save the animation sequence to your computer's hard drive as a graphics metafile, select Metafile under Storage Type. To save the animation sequence to your computer's hard drive as a pixmap image, select PPM Image under Storage Type.

Note that the ANSYS FLUENT metafiles created for each frame in the animation sequence contain information about the entire scene, not just the view that is displayed in the plot. As a result, they can be quite large. By default, the files will be stored to disk. If you do not want to use up disk space to store them, you can instead choose to store them in memory. Storing them in memory will, however, reduce the amount of memory available to the solver. Note that the playback of a sequence stored in memory will be faster than one stored to disk.

An advantage to saving the animation sequence using the PPM Image option is that you can use the separate pixmap image files for the creation of a single GIF file. GIF file creation can be done quickly with graphics tools provided by other third-party graphics packages such as ImageMagick, i.e., animate or convert. For example, if you save the PPM files starting with the string sequence-2, and you are using the ImageMagick software, you can use the convert command with the -adjoin option to create a single GIF file out of the sequence using the following command.

        convert -adjoin sequence-2_00*.ppm  sequence2.gif

(b)   If you selected Metafile or PPM Image under Storage Type, specify the directory where you want to store the files in the Storage Directory field. (This can be a relative or absolute path.)

(c)   Specify the ID of the graphics window where you want the plot to be displayed in the Window field, and click Set. (The specified window will open, if it is not already open.)

When ANSYS FLUENT is iterating, the active graphics window is set to this window to update the plot. If you want to maintain each animation in a separate window, specify a different Window ID for each.

6.   Define the display properties for the sequence.

(a)   Under Display Type in the Animation Sequence dialog box, choose the type of display you want to animate by selecting Mesh, Contours, Pathlines, Particle Tracks, Vectors, XY Plot, or Monitor. If you choose Monitor, you can select any of the available types of monitor plots in the Monitor Type drop-down list: Residuals, Drag, Lift, Moment, or Statistics. Furthermore, you can create a Surface Monitor, or Volume Monitor by selecting it from the Create drop-down button.

The first time that you select Contours, Vectors, or XY Plot, or one of the monitor types if you select Monitor, ANSYS FLUENT will open the corresponding dialog box (e.g., the Contours dialog box or the Vectors dialog box) so you can modify the settings and generate the display. To make subsequent modifications to the display settings for any of the display types, click the Edit... button to open the dialog box for the selected Display Type.

(b)   Define the display in the dialog box for the selected Display Type (e.g., the Contours or Solution XY Plot dialog box), and click Display or Plot.

You must click Display or Plot to initialize the scene to be repeated during the calculation.

See below for guidelines on defining display properties for mesh, contour, and vector displays.

7.   Remember to click OK in the Solution Animation dialog box after you finish defining all animation sequences.

Note that, when you click OK in the Animation Sequence dialog box for a sequence, the Active button for that sequence in the Solution Animation dialog box will be turned on automatically. You can choose to use a subset of the sequences you have defined by turning off the Active button for those that you currently do not wish to use.

Guidelines for Defining an Animation Sequence

If you are defining an animation sequence containing mesh, contour, or vector displays, note the following when you are defining the display:

• If you want to include lighting effects in the animation frames, be sure to define the lights before you begin the calculation. See Section  29.2.6 for information about adding lights to the display.

• If you want to maintain a constant range of colors in a contour or vector display, you can specify a range explicitly by turning off the Auto Range option in the Contours or Vectors dialog box. See Section  29.1.2 or 29.1.3 for details.

• Scene manipulations that are specified using the Scene Description dialog box will not be included in the animation sequence frames. View modifications such as mirroring across a symmetry plan will be included.