Various types of data can be animated through EnSight's flipbook capability. During the flipbook load process, selected parts are automatically rebuilt based on some criteria (such as a delta for a clipping plane). For each step, a graphical page is created and stored in memory. When the flipbook is active, the pages are displayed in order as rapidly as the hardware allows (although you can slow it down). You can also step through pages manually.

The graphical pages can be one of two types: object or image. An object flipbook saves each page as 3D geometry so you can continue to manipulate the model (for example, rotate or zoom) during playback. However, for very large models and/or long sequences, the memory requirements can be substantial. In this case, you can create image flipbooks that save only the image pixels for each page. Although the size of each page is now fixed, you cannot change the viewing parameters without reloading the flipbook.

There are four distinct types of flipbooks:

This article covers only the Create Data type of flipbook. See Animate Transient Data for details on transient flipbooks. See Display Displacements for details on mode shape flipbooks.

For more sophisticated animations, use EnSight's keyframe animation capability.