Creating and Using Animation Markers and Milestones

You can create animation markers to flag significant points in your animations. You can also create milestones to identify key moments in the timeline. You can then use these markers and milestones to produce a set of images illustrating the 3D scene at given moments in time.

Once created, markers and milestones are listed and can be managed in the Markers pane.

This task shows you how to:

See Also
Creating Pre-defined Animations
Using the Timeline
Markers Pane

Create and Handle Animation Markers

Animation markers flag significant points in your animations.

Tip: You can use markers to control your animation. For example, you can play an animation until the next marker by defining a playmarkersequence:// event link.

  1. To create a marker, click in the Marker bar at the desired time and type the marker name (New Marker by default).



  2. To rename a marker, right-click the marker and click Rename Marker.

  3. To delete:

    • a marker: right-click it and click Delete Marker .
    • all markers, right-click in the Marker bar and click Delete All Markers.

  4. To move:

    • a marker, drag it.
    • a marker, and the subsequent animation blocks, Alt + drag the marker.
    • a marker, the subsequent animation blocks, and standard animation keys, Shift + Alt + drag the marker.

Note: You can also manage markers in the Markers pane.

Create and Handle Milestones

You can create milestones to identify key moments in the timeline, and then use these milestones to produce a set of images illustrating the 3D scene at given moments in time.

  1. To create a milestone, right-click in the Marker bar at the desired time and select Create Milestone.



  2. To delete:

    • a milestone: right-click it and click Delete Milestone.
    • all milestones, right-click in the Marker bar and click Delete All Milestones.

  3. To move:

    • a milestone, drag it.
    • a milestone, as well as the subsequent milestones and animation blocks, Alt + drag the milestone.
    • a milestone, as well as the subsequent milestones, animation blocks, and standard animation keys, Shift + Alt + drag the milestone.

Note: You can also manage milestones in the Markers pane.

Use Markers and Milestones to Produce Images

You can use markers and/or milestones to produce a set of images illustrating the 3D scene at given moments in time, through the High Resolution Image workshop, or the Technical Illustration workshop.

Note: You can generate an image for each marker and/or milestone contained in the timeline. A generated image corresponds to the state of the scene at the specific time where the marker/milestone is located.

  1. Click Workshops > Publishing > High Resolution Image , or Workshops > Publishing > Technical Illustration > .

    The corresponding workshop opens. See High Resolution Image Workshop and Technical Illustration Workshop.

  2. In the workshop, choose your options as usual.

  3. Click the Multiple tab.

    • To generate an image for each marker in the timeline, select Markers.
    • To generate an image for each milestone in the timeline, select Milestones.

  4. Specify a naming convention for image files. You can specify valid file-name characters and the following case-sensitive keywords:

    %filename% The file name specified by File name in the Save As dialog box.
    %viewname% The view name, as listed in the Views pane.
    %markername% The marker name, as listed in the timeline and in the Markers pane.
    %index% A counter from 1 to the number of views. Index values have the same number of characters (1-9, 01-99, 001-999) for all files created.