Creating Animations with Flamingo

Limitations:

Flamingo provides limited tools for creating animations of your models. These animation tools move only the camera or the sun. No tools are included for animating objects.

Flamingo creates a series of still images. These still images can be combined into an animation file using third-party animation tools. See Combining frames into an animation file for a list of products that work well.

Known bugs:

The first release of Flamingo incorrectly includes GIF as an available file format in the animation setup commands. If you try to use this format (or any format other than the formats listed), the animation tools will not generate any frames.

Types of animations

There are five types to choose from:

Turntable Animation

This is the simplest type of animation. The camera rotates once around the object, capturing the number of frames you specify.

View a sample or Create a turntable animation.

Path Animation

Path animations allow you to vary the distance between the camera and target. Both the camera and target can follow a path curve, or can be stationary at point objects. This allows three different styles of animation: moving camera with fixed target, fixed camera with moving target, and moving camera with moving target.

View a sample or Create a path animation.

Fly-through Animation

Fly-through animations look ahead as the camera moves along the path.

Create a fly-through animation.

Daily sun study Animation

A daily sun study moves the sun across the sky on a given day to show how the shadows change throughout the day.

This animation type is useful if you need to see where shadows are going to fall based on the location of the sun. Architects, civil engineers, and city planners use these studies to determine if new construction will block sunlight from existing structures and greenspaces.

Sun study animations do not move the camera or target locations. Instead, they animate the sun. You cannot combine sun study animations with other animation types.

View a sample or Create a daily sun study animation.

Seasonal sun study Animation

A seasonal sun study shows the shadows at the same time of day throughout the week, month, or year.

This animation type is useful if you need to see where shadows are going to fall based on the location of the sun. Architects, civil engineers, and city planners use these studies to determine if new construction will block sunlight from existing structures and greenspaces.

Sun study animations do not move the camera or target locations. Instead, they animate the sun. You cannot combine sun study animations with other animation types.

View a sample or Create a seasonal sun study animation.