7.0

Animation options and file format
Xara 3D Maker can save animations in several different formats: AVI, ANI, Flash SWF and animated
GIF. Some options in the Animation dialog box are not supported by all file formats. Pause is supported
by all formats except AVI movies. Loop
is supported only by animated GIF format (other formats play continuously.)
To preview an animation
Select the start/stop animation button on the standard toolbar.
To preview the animation in real-time, Xara 3D Maker displays a reduced-quality image. You have
greater control over quality when exporting to disk.
Editing the text for multi-page animations
Unless you have the cursor displayed, new text is added to the page currently displayed in the Xara 3D
Maker window. This can make editing slightly tricky. Either stop the animation and edit the text or use
Text options
.
The time line
Displaying the Time line
lets you step through an animation, frame-by-frame, or pause, stop or run the animation.
You can export an individual frame by pausing the animation at the frame you want and using Export on
the View
menu.
Applying animation effects to selected text
The animation style applies to all characters (see notes below) but you can apply most attributes of the
animation to just a selected character or block of characters. For example, for a Rotate
animation, you could have some characters rotating in a different plane to the others.
Rotate, Swing and Pulsate
animation styles have two versions, 1 animates all characters as a group and 2 animates each character
individually. You can mix versions by selecting part of the text and selecting the other version (1 or 2.)
Fade, Step and Typewriter
animation styles: you cannot apply different settings to a selected area.
Tips for creating animations
Animations can create large file sizes, which are slow to download over the Internet. To keep animations
small we suggest:

Make the image as small as possible by selecting the Crop option on export.

Select Front face only for Rotate animations.

Have no more than about 20 frames per animation. (The fewer the better for keeping the size
down.)

For multi-page animations avoid having too many pages.

When exporting try selecting 16 colors (4-bit) with no dithering and optimized palette. When
images are animating, the banding is far less obvious than with a static image.

When exporting GIFs (animated or static) that have a complex background, try exporting them
as transparent GIFs.

Rotating the lights changes the file size only slightly.
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