Playing Animations

Beginner Topic used frequently in Bottango workflows.

Big idea

When you play an animation, you’ll play from the start of the play range (or the current time if it’s later) to the end of the play range.

Once you’ve added a few keyframes, press the play button (or press the space bar) to play the animation. Press the play button again or press the space bar to stop the animation if you want to stop it before it finishes.

You may at times see a “processing” animation on the play button, and a delay between when you press play and when playing begins. Bottango in some cases needs to process an animation and turn it into a format that Bottango firmware can use. The processing status display is the status of that “preprocessing.”

Play range

You may have noticed a blue bar right below the timeline in the animation. This is the play range.

By default, the play range covers the entire span of the animation. However, if you only want to play a portion of the animation, you can drag the two ends of the play range to cover the desired portion only.

When you hit play, if your scrubber is in the play range, you will play the animation starting at where your scrubber is. The animation will stop when it reaches the end of the play range.

If your scrubber is outside (or at the very end) of the play range, Bottango will jog to the beginning of the play range first, and then begin playing.