Quality Animation

[Brittani5683]

I have no issues creating an animation using the animator feature on Navisworks. My problem is when I go to export the animation, the quality isn't quite there.  It's a very large file showing a fly through of a paint shop. It's to be presented on a large screen so I need to make sure the quality remains on the large screen. I've been messing with the settings, and so far no luck.  It comes out choppy and smaller than what I want. Anyone know the magic numbers I can put into the settings?

[dgorsman]

Don't go "straight to video" - you'll get the same level of quality.  Export to image sequences, preferably PNG (which is lossless compression, compared to "lossy" for JPG).  Select a standard resolution based on your presentation medium (projectors are typically limited to 720p so going to 1080p will get shrunk anyways) and an appropriate frame rate (24 and 30 fps are standard, no need to go higher).

Then use other software to compile the image sequences (plural, do it in short segments rather than all at once) into the movie container using the desired CODEC.  Keep in mind different CODECs can have limits on resolution and frame rate e.g. MPEG4 video *really* starts to show banding at 1080p resolution.  Doing short segments will help limit the impact of errors and provide better editing control.  It also allows the model to be broken up a bit to help with rendering.

I've also pinged the board admins to move this thread - the board you're on is for programming Navisworks.

[Brittani5683]

THank you for your response. However, I am creating a windows AVI. Does the same advice apply?

[dgorsman]

Yes - the container format doesn't matter, you can choose that later.  And then change your mind without needing to render all over again. 

That's a huge benefit of the process, actually - rendering is pretty much the most time consuming step in the whole process so you only want to do that once.  Once you have the image sequences you can sequence them differently, remove or add portions, change output format, even adjust colors and speed (within reason) without needing to render everything again.