Capture Real-Time

Capture Real-Time records an animation you perform yourself:

• Perform: you drag a handle on the board, and the shapes follow it.
• Record: your movement and its timing become an animation block.
• Edit: the block is an ordinary one, so you can change it afterwards like any other.

It can record these animations:

• Position Animation: the path the shapes follow.
• Rotation Animation: how they turn.
• Scale Animation: how they grow or shrink.
• Resize Animation: how their width and height change.
• Path Crawl: how texts slide along their paths.
• Camera Zoom: how a camera zooms in and out.

Recording a movement

Record a movement by dragging a handle while the shapes follow your pointer.

• Operation:
  1. Select the shapes on the board.
  2. In Animation mode, choose Capture Real-Time in the Actions panel.
     • An empty block is created at the playhead.
     • The Attributes panel shows only the Realtime Capture section.
  3. If several modes are available, choose what to record with Capture Mode. See Capture modes.
  4. Press the capture handle on the board and drag. See The capture handle.
  5. Release to stop.
• Result: the recording becomes an ordinary block of that kind. See The recorded block in the Timeline panel.
• Tip: to move in time with the rest of the animation, keep Playback During Capture on.

Your recorded timing becomes the block's easing curve. It keeps your changes of speed and pauses, so the animation follows the rhythm of your movement.

Several shapes at once

With several shapes selected:

• They share one recording.
• With a path crawl, each text moves the same share of its own path.
• Capture Real-Time doesn't stagger them.

The recorded block in the Timeline panel

The recording becomes an ordinary block of that kind, which you can edit like any other:

• Its duration is the time you spent moving. With Playback During Capture on, it follows the animation's playback, including its speed and pauses.
• Still moments before the first movement and after the last one are left out.
• If the block would run into a block of the same kind that it can't overlap, on any of the same shapes, the recording is cut there.

Nothing is recorded, and the empty block is removed, when:

• You release without changing anything.
• The browser cancels the drag.

Undo takes back the recording first, then the empty block.

Recordings that end near their start

Your changes of speed are kept as a custom easing curve on the block. The block changes by the difference between its start and end values, and the easing only decides how fast that change happens. When a recording ends back near where it started, that difference is zero or very small, so one block couldn't show the movement in between. This happens when you end near:

• Rotation Animation: the starting angle.
• Scale Animation: the starting size.
• Resize Animation: the starting width and height.
• Camera Zoom: the starting zoom.
• Path Crawl: the starting point on the path.

Such a recording is split into two blocks: the first goes to the farthest point you reached, and the second returns from there to where you stopped. A complete turn or lap stays in one block, because it counts as a whole change.

Position Animation doesn't have this limit: its motion path keeps the whole route.

The capture handle

The capture handle is a circle with an accent outline on the block's indicator. Where it appears depends on what you record:

• Position: it sits at the start of the motion path.
• Rotation: it sits just outside the rotation indicator's circle, at the start angle.
• Scale: three handles sit beyond the reference handles.
  • The X handle records only the width.
  • The Y handle records only the height.
  • The corner handle records both, each on its own.
• Resize: the same three handles as Scale. A resize of only texts has the X handle alone, and their height follows their lines.
• Camera zoom: it sits beyond the right edge of the camera frame.
• Path crawl: it sits on the first text's path, where the text is now.

While you record:

• Recording starts as soon as you press.
• The shapes follow the pointer as you drag.
• The handle hides.

The position and crawl handles are hidden while the timeline plays.

Attributes

The Realtime Capture section of the Attributes panel keeps its settings with the board.

Capture modes

Capture Mode picks what is recorded, among the modes every selected shape can use. It appears when there's more than one, and the board remembers your last choice, Position at first.

• Capture position: the shapes follow the pointer.
  • The recording becomes an editable motion path, straight or curved.
• Capture rotation: the shapes turn around the block's center.
  • Full turns are kept as laps.
  • Cameras and texts on a path can't use it.
• Capture scale: the shapes scale around the block's center.
  • Cameras and texts on a path can't use it.
• Capture resize: the shapes change their width and height.
  • Arrows, texts on a path, and cameras can't use it.
• Capture camera zoom: a single camera zooms in and out from its center.
  • The zoom keeps the camera's proportions.

When every selected shape is a text on a path, only their path crawl is recorded.

Playback during capture

Playback During Capture decides whether the rest of the animation plays while you record. It's on by default.

• On: the active sequence plays while you record, so you can move in time with the rest of the scene.
  • Pressing the capture handle starts playback from the playhead. It continues past the end of the playback range without looping.
  • The recorded block starts at the time of your first movement. If you pause before moving, that delay keeps the block in sync with the other animations.
  • Releasing the handle stops playback and returns the playhead to its position before capture.
• Off: the animations stay paused and the playhead stays still, so the recorded block starts at that time. The editor has less work to do while you record.

Sampling and simplification

These settings decide how much detail the recording keeps.

• Simplify Tol (tolerance): how closely a recorded motion path follows your movement.
  • A higher value simplifies the path more.
  • Only used for position.
• Easing Simplify: how much your recorded changes of speed are smoothed, from 0 for none to 1 for the most.
• Sample Time: the shortest wait before a small movement is recorded again.
  • Larger movements are recorded sooner.