This page provides information about scenes in Anima.

Overview

Scenes are used to assemble simulations using the resources available in the project. The scenes must always be created inside a project and you can create as many as you need.

It is possible to share the same collision background or templates between multiple scenes and you can also use the Chaos Anima plugins to load multiple Anima scenes from the same project into the same scene file from your host 3D application.

There are many different ways to break down a project into multiple scenes, and the best way to do it will depend entirely on the characteristics of each particular project. That said, you would always want to keep in the same scene all the actors that are likely to interact with each other in the simulation.

Load a Scene

To open a scene you first need to have a project already opened. Therefore, you can only load scenes from the project that is currently loaded. If you want to open a scene from another project, you first need to Merge the scenes from that project into the current one, and then you will be able to load the scene as any other local scene.

For more information about Projects, see the following articles – Projects, Project Structure.

When a project is opened, the following Scene Browser dialog is shown, but you can also access the same dialog at any moment from the Scenes > Load:




Once the Scene Browser is displayed, you can select one or more scenes by clicking on the little dot that they have on the left side of the name (see the cursor in the screenshot) and then clicking the Open button to load all of them at the same time.




All the scenes selected are opened in different tabs, and you can switch between them with a click.


Create a Scene

New scenes can be created from the Scenes > New:




After that, you are prompted to give a name to the scene.




It is also possible to create new scenes from the Scene Browser mentioned in the previous section, the one that is used to load scenes (Scene > Load).

Here, new scenes are created when the little [+] icon at the bottom of the scene list is clicked.


Save a Scene

To save a scene you can go to Scenes > Save:




However, this is one of the actions that you use the most when working with Anima, so we recommend that you use the standard shortcut for this purpose, which is standard between most applications: Ctrl + S.

To save all the scenes opened in tabs at the same time, use the Save all alternative: Ctrl + Shift + S.

To save a copy of the current scene with a different, use the Save as option.

And then set the new name in the Save As dialog.


Duplicate a Scene

It is possible to duplicate any of the scenes of the project without having to open it, also from the Scene Browser dialog, by selecting it and using the Clone button.




The scene cloned keeps the same name as the original with a sequential number as a suffix.

Then you can rename it by double clicking on its name (as you can do with any other scene). 


Delete a Scene

To delete a scene permanently, open the Scene Browser dialog, select that scene in the list, and then use the Delete button.


Scene Auto-backups

Every time a scene is saved, a new backup copy of the scene is created. The backups are filenames that have the same name as the original with an additional suffix of 4 digits (*.ani.0001, *.ani.0002, etc).

The more recent the backup, the lower the number is (being 0001 the most recent one).



Notice that when a scene is deleted, it cannot be recovered again from the Anima UI.

However, if it was saved at some point, there will be auto-backups available in the folder of the project, so you will be able to recover the previous backup of the scene by just renaming the file, removing the numbered suffix.



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