Panel Animation
The panel under the
icon contains animation tools.
In the center of the panel there is a list of keyframes.
Each keyframe defines specific dataset orientation on the canvas, its clipping settings, and the frame in the timelapse.
Depending on the position of the keyframe in the animation timeline, it has its sequential number in the square brackets before its name.
The vertical bar and slider on the left side of the list represent the time interval of the animation. The positions of keyframes are marked with corresponding numbers on the left.
The buttons on the right side perform addition, editing, and saving/loading of keyframes. When the button "Add" is pressed, a new keyframe storing the current dataset orientation and clipping is added at the animation time marked by the current vertical slider position.
If there is more than one different keyframe, the movement of the slider will automatically adjust/update the dataset view in the rendering canvas.
Switching off the "Slider update" toggle button disables this function.
Upon changes in the total time of the animation (at the bottom of the panel), a new dialog appears with different options to remap existing keyframes.
Here is a short illustration.
The play button 
starts preview of the animation. Upon right-clicking on it, one can choose play speed and the "back-and-forth" option.
Pressing render button
activates a dialog with specifications of frames-per-second and pixel dimensions of the output pictures. Note that the true rendering resolution depends on the OpenGL viewport resolution (see the Settings below).
Currently, the animation is rendered as a set of PNG files to a folder, specified by a user. During the animation rendering process, the dataset canvas is locked. The render can be interrupted at any moment by pressing the stop button.
For extra options of the render output, see the Settings below.
Render BVV multibox option specifies if you want to include a multibox (usually rendered in the left top corner of the canvas) in the final render.
Render scalebar is an option to show the scalebar. It does not work properly yet for all cases.
Maximum frame render limit (s) puts a cap on the maximum time spent rendering a single frame. For large datasets and when rendering in high resolution/pixel size outputs it can take some time for BVV to load the volumetric dataset from disk at the highest resolution possible. Especially when the RAM/GPU memories are full, since BVV uses caching, it can take some time to clear it and load a new time point, for example. But in many cases full loading is unnecessary and the frame picture already looks good. In these cases putting this limit speeds up the final render.
OpenGL viewport resolution is an important parameter defining the final quality of the render. In the end, the final picture is rendered with this quality, but then stretched or shrunk to the BVV window size. You need to change this parameter in the separate plugin Volume Render Settings menu command and restart the BigTrace.
The
button produces volumetric data of gradual uncoiling/straightening of a single curve-like ROI.
To use it, first, a PoyLine or LineTrace ROI must be selected.
The uncoil "animation" operation is sensitive to the direction of the line (i.e. which end is start and which end is finish).
You can switch ends with a Y shortcut. Uncoiling happens from the "finish" end to the "start".
The following dialog should appear:
Straighten/Uncoil Task defines, if you want just generate intermediate ROIs as a test. Or perform full volume-timeseries generation, which is usually time-consuming.
Total number of frames defines how many intermediate ROIs/volumes will be constructed. The first would be the original ROI/volume, the last would be a straight line.
Specify final orientation vector? Once selected, it allows the definition of the final 3D direction/orientation of the straight line in the final frame.
Use modified straight volume? Sometimes to generate an animation you do not want to use the original straightened volume, but maybe clean it up a bit. This option allows you to load TIF that was straightened using the same ROI. The straighten command should save the output with the curve oriented along X axis.
Here is an example of animation volume generation, then loading it again to BigTrace and rendering using the keyframe animation.
