Whilst Studio was not created to be an animation application (and therefore does not include all the tools you would typically find on an animation platform), it is useful to have a few easy tools at hand for producing some quick, simple animations - such as turntable or time lapses -without having to leave Studio to do it.

For this purpose, Studio includes an Animation tool which makes it very easy to generate simple animations with a scene, directly from Studio. The Animation panel is accessible from the toolbar. 

Once opened, the Animation Parameters panel allows you to generate a sequence of frames from your scene animating the camera, an object, the environment or the sun.

• Output path: indicates the location for the MXS files that will be generated 
• Output name: sets the name for the exported frames 
• Frames: number of frames for the animation 
  
• Target: sets the item the active camera will be pointing at. It can be a particular object in the scene, the origin (-origin-), or the current target of the camera (-keep-)
• Render after export: this option automatically launches the animated sequence to be rendered by Maxwell after the export is finished 
  
  

Generating an animation in Studio

Once you have set the output settings and number of frames, you can proceed to define the animation of the camera, the objects, the environment or the sun, or any combination of these.

• Animate camera: you can define a travelling rotation of the camera around the target set in the previous step. You can set the rotation arc (in degrees), the animation direction (clockwise or counterclockise) and its speed (constant or easy in/out). Motion blur can be calculated from the rotation of the camera. This is great to display an object from all angles. 
• Animate object: you can define an object to be rotated around its own axis. You can set the object, the rotation arc (in degrees), the rotation axis (X, Y, or Z), the animation direction (clockwise or counterclockise) and its speed (constant or easy in/out). Motion blur can be calculated from the rotation of the camera. This option is perfect for producing turntable animations for showing objects. 
• Animate environment: you can animate the active environment –sky or IBL– describing a rotation around the scene. You can set the rotation arc (in degrees), the animation direction (clockwise or counterclockise) and its speed (constant or easy in/out). 
• Animate sun: this option allows you to easily produce a time lapse animation on your scene, with a begin and end time. You can also define the animation direction (forwards or backwards) and its speed (constant or easy in/out). 
  
  

How does the Animation tool work? 

Take a look at how this feature works in this video overview. 

Animation tool overview