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IMSI/Design, LLC, a private company headquartered in Novato, CA, is the global leader in retail CAD (Computer Aided Design). IMSI/Design products include the award-winning TurboCAD®, TurboFLOORPLAN™, TurboSketch™, and DesignCAD™ families of precision design applications.
Originally named International Microcomputer Software, Inc., the company was founded in 1983 by Bob Mayer as a publisher of popular graphics software such as PC Paintbrush and Dr. Halo. IMSI branched into the precision drawing marketplace with TurboCAD in the late 80's and FloorPlan and DesignCAD in the early 90's. IMSI/Design, LLC was formed in 2006 when an investor group led by software industry veteran Royal Farros purchased the precision drawing group from Broadcaster, Inc. (formerly known as IMSI). Look to IMSI/Design to bring leadership to new, innovative areas of CAD, such as support for the exploding metaverse and popular platforms such as AutoCAD. |
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Overview
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 AnimationLab 5 is an intuitive and easy-to-use plug-in for TurboCAD
Windows, including TurboCAD Deluxe, Pro, and Pro Platinum. It
provides you with great tools to enhance your work and presentations
by animating 2D and 3D architectural, mechanical, human and animal
models and or any rendering
If you are looking to create a presentation of your models and make
professional-looking animation, this plug-in helps you get the job
done quickly and efficiently! It’s also the ideal choice for
creating modern-looking Web pages, which require sophisticated
rendering and 3D modeling. |
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Drawing
Management |
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AnimationLab provides capabilities for managing and setting up your
drawing. The file palatte offer time saving features such as batch
operations while the seamless TurboCAD integration allows you to
take maximum advantage of your TurboCAD software. |
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Single
Click Animation |
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A number of preset scenarios allow you to create an animation movie
of your drawing with a single mouse click. For added flexibility,
the library of preset animations is expandable, and can be used in
conjunction with batch operations. |
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Graphical
Key Frames Editor |
AnimationLab allows you to automatically create scenarios using the
Key Frames Editor. It calculates the commands for intermediate
frames according to the defined key frames. This powerful editor
even takes into account Constraint Manager Variables set in
TurboCAD, as well as the TurboCAD Part Tree.
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Mix with
Sound |
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You can assign a soundtrack for each actor. AnimationLab will
calculate the sound scene, taking into account the distance to the
actors, speed of their movement, and environment. Both mono- and
stereo soundtracks can be calculated |
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Montage
Center |
Use this standalone AVI, and now MOV, processing utility to refine
your AnimationLab creations. Splice animations together, compressed
movies with defined quality and image size, preview movies and much
more.
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Parameterization |
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AnimationLab supports variable command parameters. Define and
control your object’s parameters through scenario commands in
accordance with a mathematical rule, or data from a file. |
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VBScript
Support Enhancement |
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You can write your own commands using VBScript language (Microsoft
Scripting Technologies) and save them in a drawing.
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Animate
your TurboCAD Designs
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AnimationLab give you powerful animation functionality, including:
- Simple, single click animation (see below)
- High-end animation features of the Key Frame Editor
- Movie making functionality of the Montage Center
- Powerful Drawing Management with the File Palette and
Seamless TurboCAD Integration
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Single
Click Animation
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An expandable set of preset animation scenarios allows you to create
an animation movie of your drawing with a single mouse click. Simply
select the Preset Scenario, and AnimationLab will load the scenario,
start the specified type of rendering, play the scenario for your
drawing and create the movie file. Preset scenarios are included:
- Examine
- Look Around
- Orbit Horizontal
- Orbit Vertical
- Panorama
- Slide Horizontal
- Slide Vertical
When this capability is used in Batch Operations mode, it provides
the possibility to create animated albums for file libraries of all
formats supported by TurboCAD.
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GIF
Frames and Movies
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Animation frames can be saved in GIF, BMP and JPEG formats. The
resultant movie can be either in AVI or in Animated GIF format.
Support is also provided for such options as palette optimization,
user defined colors count, dithering and transparency. |
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Graphical Key Frames Editor
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The Key Frames Editor allows you to quickly
create animations by “filling in the blanks”
between the Key Frames you define. It does this
by first storing the graphic properties (color,
thickness, etc.), rotations, movements and
scaling of actors. The Key Frame Editor then
calculates commands for intermediate frames on
the basis of the specified key frames.
In the "Law of Changing" dialog, you can select
one of the preset interpolation laws (for
example, acceleration or deceleration), or
define your own law using the field for graphic
curve editing. This provides the means to smooth
the trajectory, control speed and acceleration
within each step, make additional movements
(e.g. oscillation). |
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Constrained Objects Support
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If "Nodes Coordinates" checkbox in the "Changing
Parameters" page is checked, the actors will
take existing constraints into account when each
of the frames is calculated. This makes it
possible to create animations of cinematic
schemes or Compound Profiles of 3D objects.
By using "SetVariable" command it is also
possible to change numeric values of Constraint
Manager Variables, the list of which can be
found in the Calculator Palette. |
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Part Tree Support |
If an actor was used as an operand in the Part
Tree, then when this actor is changed the Part
Tree will recalculate the resultant body, taking
changes into account.
For example, if an actor is a part of a Compound
Profile, on which an Extrusion was created, and
then the edges were smoothed using Blend
command, then if that actor is changed, the
Compound Profile will be recalculated taking
existing constraints into consideration, an
Extrusion will automatically be built on the new
profile, and edges will be blended. |
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Mix with Sound
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You can assign a soundtrack for each actor.
AnimationLab will calculate the sound scene,
taking into account the distance to the actors,
speed of their movement, and environment. Both
mono- and stereo soundtracks can be calculated. |
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Your Own Personal
Animation Studio
The Montage Center is a standalone AVI, and now MOV, processing utility that
allows you to refine your AnimationLab creations. You can also edit any movie
file you have, or create new movies from scratch. Insert or delete individual
frames, or sets of frames using BMP, JPG, GIF, ICO, WMF and EMF files.
- Splice AVI or MOV files together
- Add Sounds to movies
- Save the frames of movies as separate BMP files
- Specify JPG or BMP files as backgrounds, or fill with a color, or set
transparency, or titles etc.
- Create compressed AVI and MOV movies with defined quality and image
size
- Preview mode provides the possibility to view separate frames, as well
as the entire future movie
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File
Palette |
The File Palette makes file management simple. By viewing the
contents of your network directories through a Windows®
Explorer-like interface, you can simply open and manage your files
directly from the TurboCAD desktop. You can also define a list of
TCW files (from one location or across your network) and tell it to
perform a batch process to all of the files at one time.
- Batch Open - Open a set of selected files in TurboCAD
- Batch Convert - Convert a set of selected files to/from any
supported TurboCAD format
- Batch Thumbnail - Create sets of BMP or JPG thumbnails for a
set of selected files
- Batch Animate - Create the same animation on a set of
selected files using any of the presets available from
AnimationLab
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Seamless
TurboCAD Integration |
AnimationLab animates your images quickly because there is no need
to re-render the view in TurboCAD when generating the individual
views for the animation. Plus, through seamless integration it takes
maximum advantage of your TurboCAD software with these animation
commands.
- Change Material
- Environment, Change Environment
- Luminance, Change Luminance
- Set Name (For the "actor" or object you wish to animate)
- Add Image To Manager (animation within an animation)
- Change Actor Image (animation within an animation)
- Extract Frame From AVI - Extract a single frames from your
animation
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New Automatic Scenario Commands
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SetPropertyValue
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This command has been improved to
include some new object types
including Parametric Symbol
Properties, Part Tree parameters,
and Dynamic components from
SketchUp. |
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RenderStyle |
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AnimationLab now allows you to set
multiple Advanced Rendering styles. |
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ChangeRenderStyle |
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This new command changes a property
of the Rendering style. |
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New Production Tools & Options
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Quicktime movie support
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AnimationLab now allows you to
produce .MOV Movie formats.
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"Interactive Movie" mode
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QuickTime VR (virtual reality) (also
known as QTVR) is a type of image
file format supported by Apple's
QuickTime. A QTVR Object Movie is a
series of still images that show an
object from several different
angles. The object may be shown in
full rotation. An array of images
are split into Rows and Columns.
Each Row shows an object at
different angles in the horizontal
plane, each Column - in the vertical
plane. User can define "Views
Columns" and "Views Rows" - number
of horizontal and vertical views and
the initial column and row |
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New Scenario Presets |
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To simplify creation of an
"Interactive Movie", several
scenario presets were added "QT
Interactive Movie" - automatically
creates “QTVR Object Movie” with
current "Views Columns" and "Views
Rows" settings |
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Produce 3D Movies (Stereoscopic)
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Animation Lab now lets you do this
by creating stereoscopic movies and
screenshots utilizing the following
supported Stereoscopic Formats:
- Red-Cyan Anaglyph (Black On
White)
- Red-Cyan Anaglyph
(Grayscale)
- Red-Cyan Anaglyph (Half
Color)
- Red-Cyan Anaglyph (Color)
- Split Vertically
- Split Horizontally
- Interlaced Vertically
- Interlaced Horizontally
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"AnimationLab Options" dialog
"Templates" |
User can load required settings from
template or create new templates.
The included templates are intended
to cover the following common movie
production needs:
- "Cell Phone" - small AVI
movie (4:3 - 176x144, 320x240)
without sound
- "Computer" - medium AVI or
MOV movie (4:3 - 400x300,
640x480, 800x600) with
compression and sound
- "HDTV" - large AVI movie
(6:4 - 720x480, 1280x720,
1920x1080) with compression and
sound
- "Interactive Movie" - “QTVR
Object Movie” (400x300, 640x480,
Stereo_400x300, Stereo_640x480)
with compression and without
sound
- "Stereoscopic" -
stereoscopic movie (400x300)
- "Web" - small GIF movie
(176x144, 320x240, 400x300)
transparent and cycling
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 System Requirements
Minimum:
TurboCAD Deluxe v14-17, and TurboCAD Pro and Pro Platinum v12.2-17.
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See animation made by TurboCAD Pro and AnimationLab (click here) |
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