Simcenter STAR-CCM+ How to create animations? New feature - direct scene animation (.mp4) export.

In the Simcenter STAR-CCM+ world, there are many ways of creating animations. Undoubtedly, "screenplay" functionality is the most flexible and advanced way of animation setup and export. Please take a look at related articles for introduction, some examples, and detailed procedures of how to use "screenplay" with history files or under SimOps (simulation operations).

A very popular way of creating animations is to export static pictures from the scenes and create animations in external tools, e.g. ffmpeg (see related articles).

Here the good news! Starting from the 2402 version of Simcenter STAR-CCM+ you can export animation files directly from the scene (.mp4 format).

There are a few things to be aware using this option:

• each time you hit start/stop iterating of your simulation a new video file will be exported from the scene (valid for step once action, or workflows with multiple steps using simulation operation as well), so it is quite easy to end up with many exported animations. If needed, you can think of using external tools to combine the animations,
• using this option, you lose flexibility you could have with exported pictures or simulation history files and later usage of the screenplay feature. That's why it is advisable to plan upfront if a backup, e.g. creating a duplicate of the scene and exporting pictures, could be a good idea.
• The feature supports scenes, plots and layout view, however,
• The duration and speed are controlled by the update frequency of the scene with a default target frame rate of 30 fps.