Landscape Design Software - Creating a Movie

Landscape Design Software

Creating a Movie

An exciting feature of Realtime Landscaping Plus is the ability to create movies of your landscape designs. This is a great way to create custom presentations for your clients. You can burn the movies to a CD or DVD for playback on any Windows computer (CD/DVD burning software is not included.)

Before you can create a movie, you need to define the path the movie camera will follow. This is done using a Realtime Camera object. See Adding a Realtime Camera for instructions on how to add one.

To create a movie:

1. Select View > Create movie The following dialog will appear:

Note: The actual dialog will depend on your version of Windows.

2. Enter the desired movie filename and click Save. The following dialog will then appear:

Camera name
If you have more than one realtime camera in the landscape, then select the one you want to use for the movie.

File name
File where the movie will be written. Click the browse button to the right of the file name to change it.

Compression
The compression method (called codec) that will be used. Intel's Indeo 5.1 is a good choice. Click Setup to set the codec-specific options or to select another codec. Your selection of codecs will vary depending on your version of Windows and other programs installed on your computer.

Resolution
The output dimensions of the movie. 640x480 is a good choice for most movies. You can select from one of the predefined resolutions, or choose Custom resolution to set your own.

Note: Selecting a higher resolution will result in a more detailed movie, but will also require more time to create and result in a larger file. A faster computer will also be required for smooth playback.

Shadow quality
Select the shadow quality level you want to use. Use low quality or None for quick previews and medium or high quality for the final movie.

Note: The shadow quality will affect the time it takes to create the movie, but will not affect the playback speed.

3. Click OK. The movie will then be created. This process may take several minutes to an hour or more, depending on the length of the movie, resolution, compression codec, and the speed of your system. Press Cancel to abort the movie creation.

Tips:

• During movie creation, you can continue to use other programs while the movie is being created in the background. However, avoid running other instances of Realtime Landscaping Plus or other 3D applications to ensure your video card does not run out of memory.

• You cannot interact with the landscape while the movie is being created. This includes moving the camera, taking screen shots, and so forth. However, you can cancel movie creation by pressing Cancel.

• Your movie will be created using the current environment settings. See Environment Settings for more information.

• Movies are created in Windows AVI format.