How to animate results with the 3D viewer

You can associate your 1D results with a triangulated water surface (TIN file). Then load this dataset and your ground elevation grid (ASCII raster or binary flt) into the 3D viewer. The viewer will display each dataset at the correct elevation and so the water surface will intersect with the ground data and show which areas are flooded (standard 2D viewers cannot do this). If you have associated multiple time steps of data with the TIN, then these data can be animated in the 3D Viewer.

The steps to produce this animation are as follows:

1. Load TIN file and underlying grid into Flood Modeller map view
2. Activate the 3D viewer tool located in the Map Tools tab of the main toolbar
3. A new window will be displayed that lists the current GIS datasets from your map that are compatible with the 3D viewer. Ensure your ground grid and TIN are selected and click OK to continue.
4. The 3D viewer will be loaded in a separate window, with your selected data automatically loaded. You can use the Add Layer function (available in the toolbar and menu system) to add further GIS datasets to the 3D map.
   You can right-click on selected layers to access the colour ramp for the layer to customise its appearance.
5. The 3D viewer will not remember any associated 1D results data associated to the TIN when it is loaded into the 3D map. Therefore you need to associate the data to be animated from within the 3D viewer. Right-click on the TIN layer and select from the displayed menu TIN file operations > model results sets > Load 1D Binary files. The method for adding data to the TIN is the same as in the main Flood Modeller interface. A new window is displayed, as shown below, that enables you to:
   • Cross referenced node labels between TIN and selected 1D binary results file
   • Select time steps to load or select option to extract max or min values
   • Select results parameter to load, e.g. stage (default setting)
     
6. Once results data are loaded (and the appropriate colour ramp set for the TIN data) access the animation toolbar (this is initially turned off). Select from the main (top) menu View > Toolbars > Animated Controller as shown below:
   
   Once this option is ticked the animation tools should be displayed in the toolbar as shown below:
   
   In addition to the standard controls the animation toolbar provides the following functionality:
   • Animation type, which can be:
     • single dataset animation – animate data from one TIN
     • multi-dataset animation – animate two or more datasets concurrently
     • multi-layer animation – animate through a group of GIS layers. Only one layer is ever visible and as one turns off the next is turned on.
   • Step size – default is to show all loaded time steps (setting = 1) but you can choose to skip time steps, e.g. setting = 2 will show every other time step (maybe useful for larger datasets)
   • Animation speed – default is one frame per second, but this can be increased up to five frames per second.
7. Select the single dataset option from the drop-down menu in the animation as shown below:
   
8. Press the play button to start animating the loaded results. Note you can loop through the data continuously by depressing the loop button in the toolbar. While animation is active a progress bar is displayed below the map view. The software also attempts to calculate the time associated to each step (although this is not always accurate).