Creating Animations

Now that you have oriented the camera to the view, animate the tweaks that you applied to the assembly components. Then record the animation and save it to an AVI file.

To animate a presentation:

1. Open Lesson2.iam
2. In the Panel Bar, click the Animate tool to open the Animation dialog box.
3. In the Animation dialog box, click the More button. The Animation Sequence list appears.
4. Select the diaphragm component from the list.
5. Click the Forward by Tweak button to test the animation. The diaphragm moves forward along its trail.

   Note that the diaphragm moves first because animations always begin with the last component that was tweaked

6. Click the Reverse by Tweak button to return the diaphragm to its original position.
7. Enter 5 in the Interval field.
8. Click the Forward by Interval button 5 times. The diaphragm steps through its tweak in 5 intervals.
9. Click the Reset button to return the diaphragm to its original position.

9. Click Play Forward. Each of the components move in sequence to their fully assembled position.
10. Click Reset to restore the components to their original position.
11. Click Auto Reverse. The animation plays one complete loop in reverse.
12. From the File menu, choose Save Copy As. Name the file Lesson3.ipn. The program saves a copy of the file containing the new camera position and animation settings.
13. Click Record. In the Save Animation dialog box, name the file Explosion1.avi.
14. Click Play Forward. The animation plays forward.
15. Click Auto Reverse. The animation plays backward.
16. Click Record. The program stops recording the animation.
17. In Windows Explorer, navigate to Explosion1.avi and double-click it. The animation plays forward and back.