Screenplay Concepts and Editor

A Screenplay must be associated with one primary view object (scene or plot) that is opened along with it. Screenplay comes with a hierarchy of its own objects by which you control the behavior of the scene.

Within a Screenplay, there are three levels of child object as depicted in the following diagram:

Action blocks within the Screenplay editor contain links that, when you click them, take you to the corresponding nodes in the object tree—provided you have the Simulation panel active. These components work together in a hierarchy as follows:

Screenplay

A Screenplay hosts actions and a director, and is associated with a primary scene or plot.

Action

An action is the first level child object of a Screenplay. Actions have a start time and a duration, and provide a time-bound container for defining when and for how long something happens in the animation.

Within an action, you must define at least one keyframe sequence.

Keyframe Sequence

Keyframe sequences are the second-level child objects of a Screenplay. They host at least two keyframes.

Keyframe sequences define which properties of Simcenter STAR-CCM+ post-processing objects are being controlled. Different types of keyframe sequence exist in order to support the various types of property found in post-processing objects. Examples include displayer opacity, scalar range, or visibility; types range from a simple checkbox to a scalar field function reference or a coordinate input. You can reference object properties of the same type in the same keyframe sequence. For example, you can animate the origin of a plane section and the origin of a scene clip using the same keyframe sequence.

Keyframe

Keyframes are the third-level child objects of Screenplays and define the values at specific positions in the context of their parent keyframe sequence. The position associated with a keyframe is defined relative to its containing action. When you first create a keyframe sequence for a property, two keyframes are defined—one at position 0 and the other at position 1. You can add extra keyframes within the sequence, each at its own position. During the rendering phase, interpolation methods are applied between keyframes to generate a transition of values during the Screenplay animation that then apply to properties as defined by the parent keyframe sequence.

Director

The director controls animation of the entire Screenplay, including target frame rate, end duration, and whether or not to loop the animation when playing it.

Editor Layout

The Screenplay editor is a panel that appears as a separate tab neighboring the Output window when you open a Screenplay object. This panel includes:

A toolbar that lets you control the scale of the animation, zoom in and out of the time and frame scale, and play the animation
A time cursor that you can move along the animation manually
A frame scale that identifies the frame number as the animation progresses
A time scale by which you can identify start and end times of actions

Note	Both manual movement of the time cursor and playback are influenced by achievable update performance, while only the recording truly depicts the effective impression of value transitions defined by the Screenplay animation.

Constraints:

Scene/Plot tab and Simulation tab: If you click the hyperlink on an action in the Screenplay editor, and the Scene/Plot tab is active, Simcenter STAR-CCM+ does not return focus to the Simulation tab. The properties window is updated, but you have to click the Simulation tab yourself.
Custom trees: Screenplay-accessible properties are highlighted in light blue in the Simulation and Scene/Plot panels, but are not highlighted in the Custom tree panel.

Mouse Pointer Icons in the Editor

In the editor, as you move the mouse over an action block, the mouse pointer changes to show what actions are possible:


	A hand shows that you can click and drag to move the block, as well as click to navigate to the associated node in the object tree.
	A keyframe symbol appears to show that you can click to add a new keyframe within the sequence.
	A resize symbol shows that you can click and drag to change the Time or Duration of the block.