Understanding the UI

Chaos Anima has an easy-to-learn and clean interface that is designed to guide you through the process of creating complex animations in record time.

To do this, it separates the creation process into two modes:

Draw Mode – Provides sophisticated tools to place characters in the scene, including creating paths or areas, placing seated characters, animating escalators, or controlling where people stay using socialization areas and traffic lights.

Edit Mode – Provides tools to manage the library, fine-tune the pose of the actors, import new ones, or motion clips, organize content, create color variations, and much more.

Each mode has a set of dedicated panels that allow you to focus on the task at hand, and you can easily switch between them using the mode selector in the upper left corner.

But before we go into more detail and start working with Anima, we recommend taking a few minutes to get used to the application’s user interface, so let’s start at the beginning.

When Anima is started for the first time, the first window shown right after the splash screen is a reduced version of the Preferences dialog.

In that first boot preferences dialog, you can define the following options:

Default projects path –  This is the path where the projects you create will be stored by default. You will be able to define a different one in the Create New Project dialog too, but the path you set here will be used as the root path of your projects by default.

Purchases path – This is the path where all the downloaded models from Anima will be placed.

Video decoding device – Defines the device that will be decoding the video streams of the 4D actors. The options will be CPU or any of the GPUs supporting NVDEC that you may have installed in your system. (It might happen that some of your GPUs do not have hardware decoding capabilities yet. If that happens, Anima will detect it automatically and fall back to using the CPU as the decoding device.)

Language – Sets the language of the interface. Currently, only English and Spanish are supported.

Displayed unit system – Sets the displayed units (Metric or Imperial).

Render system – Sets the Graphic Drivers used by the 3D viewport (OpenGL or Direct3D). If Anima shows an error right on start and closes, it is a good idea to try switching this setting to the alternative one.

In a normal situation, this dialog should be shown only once, the first time you start Anima on the machine. However, you can also force it to appear again by using the “Anima Safe Mode” shortcut icon available in the Windows Start menu:

All these settings can be changed anytime from the Preferences dialog available in Anima Menu > Edit > Preferences.

Which will show the following dialog with a few extra options.

Undo actions | history limit – Sets the maximum number of actions that can be undone.

Max scene backups – Sets the maximum number of scene backups that will be kept (learn more about this in the Scenes article).

Max simultaneous downloads – Sets the number of actors that can be downloaded simultaneously. The maximum is 6, but you can choose a lower number if you want (learn more about how to download models from the library in the Installing Actors article).

Max CPU threads for simulator – Configures the number of CPU threads dedicated to calculating the simulation. In most cases, the default Auto setting provides optimum results, but you can disable this and define the number of threads manually.

Max baking RAM buffer size – Configures the amount of RAM used for baking animations before saving them to disk. Again, the default Auto setting provides optimum results in most cases, but you can disable this and define the RAM manually.

When all the options are defined, click the SAVE button to continue.

After the initial boot, the first dialog that appears when Anima is launched is the Welcome Screen.

This window gives instant access to most of the things you will probably want to do when you start working.

In the center of the window (RECENT), you will find a brief list of the recently modified projects on your machine, with the most recent at the top of the list.

At the upper center, you can see a preview of the last scene that was saved from that project.  Above the preview, there are 4 shortcuts to quickly manage the projects: 

Create New (), Browse (), Open and Close Window ().

Below the recent projects, a list of the DEMO files is displayed, which is handy if you want to check some of the examples provided by the installer.

On the left side, a column with five links is displayed to let you quickly access useful Anima resources that are available online:

the Chaos Anima website (), this Anima documentation (), the Chaos Anima Youtube channel () where you will find a lot of sample videos and tutorials, the Frequently Asked Questions and direct contact to our great Support Service () where we will be happy to give you any assistance you may need.

At the bottom center, you can choose whether you want to see this Welcome Screen or not when Anima is started. If you choose not to show it automatically, you can always show it manually by going to Anima Menu > View > Welcome screen.

The place to design, organize, and simulate your animations is the Anima Draw mode.

This mode is arranged into logical panels to help you focus on different aspects of your work, such as selecting actors, drawing paths and areas, synchronizing the scene with your 3D app with Alive, applying motion clips, editing the properties of the nodes,  or managing their hierarchy in the node tree.

Main Menu – This is the core of the application, where you get access to all the other submenus (File, Scenes, Edit, View, Help). Right next to it, you can see the license that is currently activated on this machine: ALL, PRO, or LITE.

Mode – The mode switch is used to toggle the workspace between Draw [T] and Edit [U] modes.

Templates Library – The Templates library contains system-wide and user-defined area presets. Drag these into the 3d Viewport to quickly populate scenes.

Actors Library – Contains a list of all the actors available in the current project: the ones from the Purchases folder and all the available actors online in the current user account.

Drag them over characters in the 3D Viewport or into the Crowd field of the Properties panel to assign characters to paths, 4D paths, areas, or chairs.

The following options will appear when you hover the mouse over the title of all the Library panels (Templates, Actors, Motion Clips, and Backgrounds) and also in the Project properties panel (except the thumbnail option):

Filter search box
Thumbnail or List view toggle
Floating panel toggle
Hide panel ( use the Panel button [] to show it again)

Motion Clips Library – Contains a list of all the motion clips and categories available in the current project. Drag these onto the Motion Clip/Category property of an area to assign to all its characters. Assign it to individual characters by dragging to their Actor Clip properties or directly over a specific actor in the 3d Viewport.

Actor submenu – Right-click on any actor to access the library item sub-menu and organize them as you please.

Scene Tabs – Each opened scene is displayed in a different tab. You can open multiple scenes from the same project at the same time.

Display Buttons

Display Preferences. Use this button to set up the viewport quality settings and preferred interaction preset (Anima, 3dsMax, Cinema 4D, Unreal Engine, Maya, or Blender).

Camera Preview. Choose between the cameras synchronized with Alive here.

Viewport Navigation tools. Let you control the viewport point of view by:

Orbit
Pan
Zoom
Zoom Extents
Top View

Alive Synchronization button – Use this button to connect with the Anima plugin and synchronize scenes, cameras, and backgrounds.

Toolbar – This toolbar contains all the tools needed to create or edit the scenes.

Select and transform tool – Use this tool to select objects and actors from the viewport.

Path tools (For 4D walking and Rigged models) – Use this tool to draw walkways (paths) over the collision backgrounds and make the models walk and run over them.

Avoid area tool – Use this tool to define obstacle areas that the actors must avoid.

Area Tool – Creates Area objects that provide a simple way to place groups of static actors.

Traffic light tool – Creates a special area that lets you stop and/or start the actors.

Chair tool – Creates seated people individually or in groups.

Escalator tool – Lets you create fully animated escalators and moving walkways.

3D Viewport – Shows a real-time preview of your animation project and enables you to design, create, and edit areas as well as move actors, assign motion clips, import background models, and create your scenes.

Clipping Tool – Drag up and down to reveal different levels of height for the background model. Or click the [+] icon to create more height shortcuts.

Chaos account | Panels

Use the Chaos Account button to open the My account window.

The Notifications icon shows you notifications about Chaos news and updates.

Use the Panels button to show or hide the panels available in Draw mode (Actor library, Clip library, Background library, Template library, Project properties, and Node properties).

My account

Manage my Chaos account – Opens the my.chaos portal where you can manage your licenses, assign or revoke licenses to users in your Organization. For more information, see the My Chaos Portal Guide.

Sing out – You can sign out of your account and switch accounts.

Manage Chaos License Server – Opens the License Server interface (localhost:30304).

See Chaos plans & pricing – Opens Chaos website with available purchase options. 

Project node tree – This window shows a hierarchical view of all the areas and actors in your scene and allows for an at-a-glance understanding of the project. From here, you can create, select, and edit all the elements in the animation.

Backgrounds Library – Contains a list of all the backgrounds available for this project.

Node Properties – Shows the properties for the currently selected object. This panel is dynamic, and its contents will be different depending on the type of object selected.

Playback settings – Adjust the frames, time, playback speed, fps, format, and quality of the video.

Main Menu

This is the core of the application, where you get access to all the other submenus (File, Scenes, Edit, View, Help).

Mode

The mode switch is used to toggle the workspace between Draw and Edit modes.

Actors Library

Contains a list of all the actors available in the current project and the ones from the library that have already been downloaded to the Purchases folder.

Please note that all the Library Panels have filters available in their titles (see number 4 from the previous Drawing Mode scheme)

Import Model () button. Use it to import new actors in FBX format.

Motion Clips Library

Contains a list of all the motion clips and categories available in the current project and allows you to import additional motion clips.

Import Motion clip () button. Use it to import new animations in FBX format.

Preview window

Displays a preview of the character selected in the Actors Library with the animation selected in the Motion Clips Library. Any edits to the pose or textures are updated live in this window.

Pose Editor Window

Use the pose editor to adjust the Actor’s pose for the currently selected motion clip. This can be used to correct individual actors for each individual motion clip (with one clip selected) or apply changes to the main pose of this actor (with the Rest-Pose selected).

Joints – Click hold and drag them to change the angle or the position to adjust the pose.

Current Actor bones (yellow).

Reference Actor bones (blue).

Preview Viewport Controls

Synchronize Viewports – Links the rotation of both viewports.

Reference Pose – Shows the Anima default standard actor and both bone structures ( blue -> default actor & yellow -> current actor) to use it as a reference pose for adjustments. Only is available when the Rest-Pose is selected.

Symmetrical pose edit – Lets you edit the left and right sides of the actor at the same time.

Pose Edit Tools

Tools that can help you edit the pose:

Pose Reset

Undo last saved pose

Copy pose

Paste pose

User Account | Panels

Use the Account button to sign in/out of your user account and access your models and notifications.

Use the Panels button to show or hide the panels available in Draw mode (Actor library, Clip library, Actor Information, and Tags).

Actor / Clip Information

Displays settings and components for the currently selected Actor or motion clip.

Tags / Categories

Tags and categories help you to organize your resources and allow the system to match the correct motion clip to the characters.

Click the Panel’s Icon from the right side of the title bar of the main Anima window to manage the visibility of the panels.

The ones that are visible are highlighted in blue and have a check on the left side of their name. Click on one of them to toggle its visibility.

Panels can also be closed by directly clicking on the X button found in the right-hand corner.

To combine a panel with another to form a tabbed dock, drag it by its title bar on to the target panel.

To restore the layout to the previous settings, go to the Panel List and select Use last workspace.

To reset the layout to the system default go to the Panel List and select Use default workspace.