Animation

** this tool is under development, not fully functional, and may change significantly **

The Animation tool allows saving and restoring scenes in Chimera. Eventually it will include placing these scenes along a timeline, playing the resulting animation sequence, and recording it as a movie. See also: Movie Recorder, Demos, Rapid Access, Chimera sessions, making movies

There are several ways to start Animation, a tool in the Utilities category. Clicking Settings opens the Animation preferences. Close dismisses the Animation dialog, and Help opens this manual page in a browser window.

** Scenes are under development and do not include all aspects of Chimera. Including scenes in saved sessions may significantly increase session file size and time to restore. **

A Chimera scene includes:

• locations and orientations of models and clipping planes (etc., as in a saved position)
• display styles, colors, and visibilities of molecule models, molecular surfaces, and their parts
• volume displays
• 3D labels and 2D labels
• certain global parameters such as background, lighting, and effects

Scenes can be saved and restored using the Animation dialog or the scene command, or restored from Rapid Access.

In the Scenes section of the Animation dialog:

icon	meaning
	add scene (save the current state of Chimera as a scene)
	remove the chosen scene
	remove all scenes

Clicking a scene thumbnail restores the corresponding scene in Chimera and chooses the scene (highlights the thumbnail) in the dialog; right-clicking a scene thumbnail raises a menu with the options:

• Update - overwrite scene with the current state of Chimera
• Delete - remove scene
• Properties - open a dialog for editing scene description