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– 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.

the Preferences

dialog

.

In

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

from the

 Preferences dialog

available in Anima Menu > Edit > Preferences.

Which will show the following dialog with a few extra options

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 (

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and Close Window (

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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 (

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Anima documentation (

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Chaos Anima Youtube channel (

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and direct contact to our

great Support Service

(

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.

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 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.

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

–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):

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Filter search box

Thumbnail or List view toggle

Floating panel toggle

Hide panel ( use the Panel button [

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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.

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

– Each opened scene

is displayed in a different tab. You can open multiple scenes from the same project at the same time.

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.

Let you control the viewport point of view by:

Orbit

Pan
Zoom
Zoom Extents
Top View

Use this button to connect with the

Anima plugin and synchronize scenes, cameras, and backgrounds.

.

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.

–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.

– Drag up and down to reveal different levels of

height

for the background model. Or click the [+] icon to create more height shortcuts.

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, Background library, Template library, Project properties, and Node properties).

–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.

–Adjust the frames, time, playback speed, fps, format

, and quality of the video.

File, Scenes, Edit,

View, Help).

Right next to it you can see the currently activated license on this machine: ALL, PRO, or LITE.

Mode

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

Edit modes.

Import Model

(Image Added) button. Use it to import new actors in FBX format.

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

.

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).

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 Image Added

Undo last saved pose Image Added

Copy pose Image Added

Paste pose Image Added

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).

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.

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