Multiple .res files in animation
 

Greetings,
Anyone knows whether is possible to perform an automated animation with multiple .res files in CFX-POST? When I want one single animation of several .res files (multiple restarts) the CFX-POST doesn't recognise the next .res file loaded in the animation panel. The code seems to get lost. Or perhaps I've been doing the wrong approach. Anyone have a clue?
Thanks in advance, G. G.

Re: Multiple .res files in animation
 

Hi Gloria,

Yes, you can do it, I have done it many times. Firstly, you can either generate the frames manually or use a Post/Perl script. Make sure you have the Options/Advanced/Keep Intermediate Graphics files selected. This will then generate the frames for the entire animation across the multiple res files.

Then you need to generate the animation from the frames. If you have some gizmo to do this then use it, many people have software to create animated GIFs, AVIs and MPEGs. CFX-Post actually calls a package called mpeg-tools to generate the MPEG from the frames, so you can use that if you want. You will find it in the /CFX5.6/tools/share/src/mpeg_tools directory. Also by manually creating the animation you can do things like slowing the frame rate below 24 frames per second by repeating frames. Very useful.

Anyway, give this a try and let us know how you get on.

Regards, Glenn

Re: Multiple .res files in animation
 

Thanks for the reply Glenn,
Yes, I've been doing the manual approach, generating several independent animations (just storing the jpeg files) and afterwards renaming the files accordingly and editing the mpg.param file as well (needed by the mpeg_encode utility).
But my lazy part had to ask you guys about it. That's it...
Anyway, if you want to share some perl/post scripting, that would be really great.
Thanks again, G. G.

Re: Multiple .res files in animation
 

Hi Gloria,

Simply load the next res file and add a new key frame. If you are doing it in CFX-5.6, reduce the number of intermediate frames to zero between these two key frames. CFX-5.7 doesn't have a problem with this.

If it is a transient animation, make sure you load the last timestep of the previous res file before loading the first timestep of the next res file.

Regards, Robin

Re: Multiple .res files in animation
 

Robin,
It's exactly the solution I've been looking for.
Thanks, G. G.

I had this exact problem caused by multiple restarts, the best way to solve it is just to copy and paste the .trn files from the previous runs and place them in the final directory. Then when you open the final .res file into cfx post all of the time steps are present and you can form the animation in the usual way.

Hope this helps anyone else who is currently having this problem as i realise the date is quite far back!!!