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Flipbook animation

All that is needed to create a flipbook animation is a time-varying database. To view a flipbook animation, open a time-varying database, create plots as usual, and click the Play button in the Main Window's File Panel or in the visualization window's Animation Toolbar. A flipbook animation repeatedly cycles through all of the time states in the database displaying the plots for the current time state in the visualization window. The result is an animation that allows you to see the database evolve over time. The VCR buttons, shown in figure, allow you to control how a flipbook animation plays. The animation controls are are also used for controlling keyframe animations. Clicking the Play button causes VisIt to advance the database timestep until the Stop button is clicked. As the plots are generated for each database time state, the animation proceeds only as fast as the compute engine can generate plots. You have the option of caching the geometry for each time state so animations will play smoothly according to the animation playback speed once the plots for each database time state have been generated.