Making an animation in Shape by example

FYI: I made my own Library (copying Erica). I wrote an outline about the 2007 Shape paper, ​here. In case anyone is interested about the point of Shape.

Since our group is trying to utilize the Shape software for our simulations, I figure I would start to document helpful components to visualizing and modeling in Shape. Here I will briefly explain how one can make a movie, or animation in Shape. Some days toward the end of the day, I am going to go through the templates on their website. With Shape however, I have two main objectives:

  1. Learn how to convert our hdf5 simulation data to ASCII, so that it can be fed into Shape.
  1. Learn how to visualize this external data in Shape. What limits are there and what can Shape tell us about our data compared to other visualization softwares?

So if the template I check out is useful, I'll make a blog post about it explaining the objective of the template. Eventually I'll use these to make a series of wikipages documenting Shape for our purposes. However I am yet to be a "Shape Master." Otherwise I would have done 1 & 2 already. This template is quite simple: how do you make a movie in Shape?

Results:

(Make sure you check out the .gifs! They are really pretty.)


Image 1
Image 2
​BW GIF
​Red/Blue GIF 		​GIF

Image 3
Image 4
​GIF ​GIF

This data is from one of the ​Shape templates, titled Animation 1 - Rotation. It is a bipolar nebula rotating around all three x-y-z Cartesian axes. Image 1 is a 2D projection, comparable to our column density map movies. However the object is not evolving in time. Image 2 is the line profile for the velocity vs. pixel intensity as the object rotates. Image 3 is the mesh used for the object. Image 4 is its PV-Diagram.

Guide:


Image 5

This screen-shot was taken post-rendering. Click the big button with the Shape-S in the top, left-hand corner to view the data as seen here. Prior to rendering, the PV-diagrams will be black. Note that all of the data parameters are already in the template. You can adjust the colors if you want too. For instance I have also made a movie color coded to indicate Doppler-shifting, i.e. Red/Blue (see above). Other options include grey scale, rainbow (color), red/blue, gradient, and spectrum. Click the movie-film looking button in the same row as the renderer to get to the animation module.


Image 6

Image 6 is what the animation module looks like. Instead of clicking the rendering button, you'll click the animation button (which is circled and marked as the second step). First you want to adjust what format your output will be. Note the timeline at the bottom of the GUI. As Shape makes your animation, it will tell you how far it is in the process. On the right hand side of the Animation module is the variable tree. Below the variable tree, in the table, is what is referred to as the variable stack. Essentially the functionality of this part of the animation module in v. 5 seems not much different from v. 4. Y

Here is a table of screen shots of all the parameters listed in the animation module.


Image 7. General
Image 8. Variable
Image 9. Output

Image 7 (in order from top to bottom):

  • Name of your file output
  • Number of frames (where you want them to start and end in the simulation)
  • Current frame tells you when Shape is in spitting your .png output (there is also a timeline at the bottom of the GUI that starts from first frame and ends at the number of the last frame) relative to the simulation
  • Start and end times of your simulation for some given time units (years, days, hours, minutes, seconds).
  • Like current frame, it tells you what current time your simulation is being animated at in your chosen units.
  • Distribute & Fields: Using particles for rendering or output velocity vector information may require Shape to redistribute the particles in every frame. This is done by default. If you are not using particles, then disabling the distribution can save processing time.
  • Render: Render while you animate. This is essentially required.

Image 8. (Currently investigating)

Image 9. Above in the results section of this post, you can see all of the options visualized that are listed here: 2D Maps, PV Diagrams, 3D Mesh, Hydro, Plots (Images) (Note: the numbers to the right indicate LxW size of the image, so these plots are 512x512), Plots (Ascii), Math Variables, and Time Units. You can denote the image type, and indicate where you want the images to be saved (a working directory).

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