Setting up a seasonal sun study animation

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

View a seasonal sun study animation.

1. Set the location for your sun study animation. From the Raytrace menu, click Sun.

2. If you want more realistic lighting, be sure Automatic Sky is turned on: From the Raytrace menu, click Environment. In the Main tab, select Automatic Sky.

3. Click then right-click .

4. At the Start Date prompt, enter the date for the first frame. The most reliable format for entering the date is ?10-Jan-2002?. This avoids the incorrect interpretation of ?1/10/2002? which is January 10th in the United States, and October 1st in most of the rest of the world.

5. At the End Date prompt, enter the date for the last frame.

6. At the Time of day prompt, enter the time for all the frames.

7. At the Number of Frames prompt, enter the number of frames you want in the animation. If the start date is 1-Jan-2002, and the end date is 31-Jan-2002, and you want frames every day, you need 31 frames (be sure to count both the first and last frames, in addition to the frames in between).

8. At the File type prompt, enter the type of file you want to create for each frame of the animation. Choose from JPG, BMP, PNG, or TGA. If you see an option for GIF, do not use it ? it will not work.

9. At the Viewport name to render prompt, type the name of the viewport you want to animate. The default is the Perspective viewport.
If the viewport name contains spaces, be sure to surround it with quotes (eg. "My Viewport") when you type it.

10. At the Animation sequence name prompt, type a name for the animation sequence. This name will be used to name the files in the animation, and for the HTML animation preview page that is generated as part of the animation.
For sequence names with spaces, surround the name with quotes (eg. "My Sequence") when you type it.

11. Render the Frames.