ABAQUS/CAE offers two means of animation:
Object-based animation
Object-based animation is the display of a sequence of deformed shape plots, contour plots, symbol plots, or material orientation plots. ABAQUS/CAE can produce three different types of sequences of these plots. These three sequence types are called “time history animation,” “scale factor animation,” and “harmonic animation.”
Time history animation produces a sequence of deformed shape, contour, symbol, or material orientation plots that vary over time according to actual analysis results. Scale factor animation produces a sequence of images that vary only in the scaling of a single deformed shape, contour, or symbol plot. Harmonic animation produces a sequence of images that represents complex result values varying according to applied angles. To better understand these three types of animation, see “Time history animation,” Section 33.1.1; “Scale factor animation,” Section 33.1.2; and “Harmonic animation,” Section 33.1.3; respectively.
While an object-based animation is playing, you can dynamically change display characteristics such as the view, any viewport annotations, and plot state-dependent customization options.
Image-based animation
Image-based animation is the playback of an animation file. You create an animation file in ABAQUS/CAE by first playing object-based animations in one or more viewports and then selecting Animate
Save As from the main menu bar. Once saved, your animation can be played external to ABAQUS/CAE using industry-standard animation software. You can choose to save your image-based animation file in either QuickTime or Audio Video Interleave (AVI) format.
From within ABAQUS/CAE you can also display an image-based animation by selecting the animation file as a background movie. When active, the background movie is displayed in a viewport in the Visualization module. For more information, see “Displaying and customizing a background movie,” Section 4.6.3.
Note: ABAQUS/CAE also enables you to save an animation in VRML format, which creates a three-dimensional rendition of the animation. Because these files are three-dimensional, they are not strictly image-based; however, you can play and distribute animation files in VRML format as you would files in QuickTime or AVI formats.
In general, animation playback from a file provides better performance than object-based animation, particularly for large models. While an image-based animation is playing, you cannot change its display characteristics.