VizSchema

# Animation

# Quick and not-so-dirty animations in VisIt

Note: Make sure VisIt and Vizschema are installed properly and running. 

The following instructions outline how to create a VisIt database file from within VisIt. The database file is merely a text list of datafile names and can be constructed manually "by hand" or by a script. 

Instructions on how to use such a database file are included in the easy Mac installer (see item 6) 

```

Start VisIt

Select "File-->Select file..." (NOT Open file)

Choose directory containing a time series of HDF5 data files (all should be of the same kind ie. field data)

Highlight multiple data files

Press "Group", then "Ok"

Select "File--> Refresh file list"

```

Now a .visit file should be visible in the same directory as the data files themselves. 

Open this "database" file as you would a single data file 

Visualize/setup data as you would a single data file... the first "frame" of data should be visible when "Draw" is selected. The animation buttons should be activated. 

Now when the play or forward/backward animation buttons are pressed, the data files that were highlighted when the database file was created will be loaded and rendered with the same settings as for the first data set. These frames can then be dumped automatically as image files and grouped into a movie file in post-processing (ie Quicktime Pro). 

Note: multiple .visit database files can be loaded in order to combine different kinds of data plots into a single movie.