User Guide > Animation   

Flipbook

To quickly review the motion and timing of an animated sequence, Houdini lets you create an OpenGL rendered flipbook of your viewport contents. This provides a faster method for reviewing a shot's timing without rendering out the sequence. You can also attach an audio file to test out how your shot is working with the sound.


Creating a Flipbook animation

RMB-click on the Launch Render button at the base of the viewport and choose View: Flipbook. The first time you create a flipbook animation it is a good idea to set your flipbook options. In this panel, you can set up the timing and size of your flipbook.

Some of the options you have include:

Frame Start/End/Increment - These values define which frames will start and end your flipbook. The expressions $RFSTART and $RFEND are used to automatically use the frame range set in the timeline. The Increments value lets you cut down the number of frames rendered by setting this value higher than 1.

Audio Filename - This audio file will be synched up with the frame 1 and will play back in mPlay after the flipbook is rendered. If you set the start frame to a value other than 1 than the audio will be clipped accordingly.

Resolution - By default the resolution will be set to match the size of the active view. To customize this size, check the Resolution button then define a render size. The framed view in the viewer will then be scaled to match the chosen resolution. As you increase or decrease the resolution you will see the effect it has on the memory being used using the Approximate Memory feedback.

Zoom - If you want to quickly reduce your chosen resolution for a test render then you can choose one of the Zoom values. This will resize the image while preserving your original resolution values.

Click Accept to use the chosen settings to render the flipbook. The images will be stored to disk in your tmp directory then loaded into mPlay for review. From mPlay you can save the sequence out using a variety of file formats.

Once you have set up one flipbook then you can LMB-click on the Launch Render button to start another flipbook.