29.7.3 Saving an Animation

Once you have created your animation, you can save it in any of the following formats:

• Animation file containing the key frame descriptions

• Picture files, each containing a frame of the animation

• MPEG file containing each frame of the animation

• Video (see Section  29.8)

Animation File

You can save the key frame definitions to a file that can be read back into ANSYS FLUENT (see Section  29.7.4) when you want to replay the animation. Since the animation file will contain only the key frame definitions, you must be sure that you have a case and data file containing the necessary surfaces and other information referred to by the key frame descriptions.

To write an animation file, select Key Frames in the Write/Record Format drop-down list in the Animate dialog box, and click the Write... button. In the resulting Select File dialog box (see Section  2.1.6), specify the name of the file and save it.

Picture File

You can also generate a picture file for each frame in the animation. This feature allows you to save your animation frames to picture files used by an external animation program such as ImageMagick. To save the animation as a picture file, follow these steps:

1.   Select Picture Files in the Write/Record Format drop-down list in the Animate dialog box.

2.   If necessary, click the Picture Options... button to open the Save Picture dialog box and set the appropriate parameters for saving the picture files. (If you are saving picture files for use with ImageMagick, for example, you may want to select the window dump format. See Section  4.21.1 for details.) Click Apply in the Save Picture dialog box to save your modified settings.

Do not click the Save... button in the Save Picture dialog box. You will save the picture files from the Animate dialog box in the next step.

3.   In the Animate dialog box, click the Write... button. In the resulting Select File dialog box (see Section  2.1.6), specify the filename and click OK to save the files. (See Section  4.21.1 for information about specifying filenames that increment automatically as additional pictures are saved.) ANSYS FLUENT will replay the animation, saving each frame to a separate file.

MPEG File

It is also possible to save all of the frames of the animation in an MPEG file, which can be viewed using an MPEG decoder such as mpeg_play. Saving the entire animation to an MPEG file will require less disk space than storing the individual window dump files (using the picture method), but the MPEG file will yield lower-quality images. To save the animation to an MPEG file, follow these steps:

1.   Select MPEG in the Write/Record Format drop-down list in the Animate dialog box.

2.   In the Animate dialog box, click the Write... button. In the resulting Select File dialog box (see Section  2.1.6), specify the filename and click OK to save the files.

ANSYS FLUENT will replay the animation and save each frame to a separate scratch file, and then it will combine all the files into a single MPEG file.