• Define your own color palettes, such as coloring flood depth by different hues of blue
• Visualize the 3D surface using facetted or smooth rendering
• Display an elevation color legend
• Interactively place titles and labels anywhere on the rendered images and animations
• Interactively place other bitmap images and logos on the rendered images and animations

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• Interactively locate your "eye" point
• Interactively locate what you are looking at (i.e., "focal point")
• Interactively create a "camera path" for flying down the river when creating an animation
• Adjust the "speed" of flight when creating an animation
• Adjust the amount of "zoom" in and out

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• Record animations to MPEG, AVI, and FLIC video files for playback and presentations
• Save single images to JPEG, BMP, PNG, and many other graphic image file formats
• Print rendered images to any B/W and color printer
• Color editing and adjustment using either RBG or HLS color standards

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The RiverCAD Animator environment is broken into four primary control areas to optimize the speed and ease from which the user can navigate the functions of the application.

• Tree Browser Area
• Property Page Area
• Layout Window Area
• Toolbar Area

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The Tree Browser Area operates in tandem with the Property Page Area. When a Tree Browser item is selected its corresponding properties are displayed in the Property Page Area.

An additional feature of the Tree Browser Area is a right-click activated context-sensitive menu which provides functions appropriate for the selected item.

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The Property Page Area is used to control the attributes of the item selected in the Tree Browser Area. This area allows the user to modify a wide range of environment variables and change specific features.

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The Layout Window Area contains three sub-windows which the user can toggle between. These sub-windows are:

• Design
  The primary function of the Design Window is to load, order, and position the data and images as desired.
• Preview
  The Preview Window displays the relative size and position of the data space that was set in the Design Window and the aspect ratio of the data controlled in the World Window. This window illustrates all objects and images in the order, position, and relative size that they will appear in the desired final output.
• World
  The World Window is the virtual reality world used to handle and manipulate the data. The World Window is used to modify the 3D view. It is also used to create and edit flight paths.

Each of these windows give the user a different perspective for working with the data and setting up the rendered scene.

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The Toolbar Area is designed for quick point and click control of the workspace. The handy buttons control some of the more common and practical features of the application that allow the user to navigate the workspace in a timely fashion.

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A flight path is created in RiverCAD Animator by storing an ordered series of views that are used as control points, which represent specific locations along the flight path. RiverCAD Animator generates flight paths by using the control points to calculate the curve of the path through the data space. The flight path is edited via interactively using the mouse within the Layout Window Area.

The current control point for editing purposes is highlighted in green. Control points can be added, deleted, or moved. Whenever a new control point is added, it becomes the current control point. Subsequent additions will be inserted either before or after the current control point.

While the flight path is in "Edit Mode," the keyboard can be used to navigate through the control points. In addition, the Goto Point menu command allows you to jump to any control point along the flight path.

Home Key - First control point
End Key - Last control point
Page Up Key - Previous control point
Page Down Key - Next control point

The flight path can be rendered using a variety of different attributes. The most important of these attributes is the Path Length. This controls the total number of steps (or "views") that will be used in rendering the flight path. The more steps used, the smoother the flight path wil appear to be.

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