How to Animate Your Architectural Presentation with Envision | Chaos

Adding animation to your presentation has many benefits, including improved client understanding, increased engagement, and clearer communication. Chaos Envision is a 3D assembly and animation tool for effortless storytelling with unmatched realism. This guide explains how to add a crowd of animated people, moving vehicles, and animated vegetation to your architectural presentations.

How to add a crowd of animated people
Animated people allow you to convey authentic context with realistic movement and human interaction in your presentation. This will enhance your visual narrative and make the space feel more engaging. Envision is powered by an integration with Anima software. Anima is known for the quality of its character models, lifelike animation, and realistic crowd behavior.

Step 1: To add a crowd of animated people to your model, click on the Anima Crowd icon on the toolbar, select a surface, and draw a path where the people will walk. Adjust the length and curvature if needed

Step 2: Add people via the Cosmos library, use the filter option to make things easier, and drag and drop them into your scene.

Step 3: Go to full-screen mode to see a preview. You can explore the scene while having the people walk. You’ll notice the characters subtly sidestep when they get in front of each other and don’t walk through each other. This function demonstrates realistic crowd behavior, with fully motion-captured people moving with natural actions.

To create a crowd without specifying any characters, you can set the desired number with 'Actor Count' and click 'Generate' to add them to the path. You can adjust the path and regenerate the crowd anytime.

To use 4D characters, you can individually drag and drop the asset in the viewport. While this works great for characters with idle animation, walking 4D characters need to be manually bound to an existing path, which can be done with a dedicated button in the actor's details.

Add interactive space exploration with proximity-activated object animations. These trigger when a specific component gets near key items, making your environment responsive and dynamic with minimal effort.

1. Select the object you want to animate (e.g., door, car barrier, elevator, etc.).
2. Choose what triggers the animation—camera or animated elements.
3. Set the activation radius for when the animation begins.
4. Fine-tune the animation type, speed, delay, and easing for smooth, realistic motion.

How to add animated vehicles
Just like the people models, you can animate vehicles along paths.

Step 1: Select a surface and draw a path where you want the vehicles to move. Adjust if needed.

Step 2: Add vehicles from the Cosmos library by dragging and dropping them into your scene, and use the “Move along path” option.

Step 3: Go to full-screen mode to see a preview, where you can explore the scene while having the vehicles move.

With Envision’s Anima integration, a revolutionary traffic simulation system is included, automating and further simplifying smarter vehicle behavior. The highlights of this feature are:

• Vehicles that follow real-world traffic rules, navigate intersections, and interact naturally with pedestrians.
• Lifelike motion with spinning wheels, chassis roll, and terrain adaptation.
• Automatic collision handling for smooth and realistic interactions.
• Color editing options for greater customization.

How to create moving vegetation with wind animation
Bring natural movement and life to your architectural presentations with moving vegetation.

Step 1: Enable the animated filter in Envision to make the vegetation models appear. To avoid duplicating a model manually, you can place it in a scatter object.

Step 2: To make the vegetation models move, enable the wind animation feature by going to the “Environment settings” and activating “Wind animation.” Use the intensity slider to adjust the animation from gentle to chaotic movements. This setting controls all animated vegetation in your project.

Step 3: Use the full-screen mode to see a preview. Explore your scene while watching the vegetation move.

How to use animation to tell your design story
With Envision, you can animate environmental elements like the sky, clouds, and sunlight to show different times of day or moods. You can also animate variations to present design options such as alternative layouts or material choices. They all coordinate seamlessly in the timeline, demonstrating accurately how various aspects change over time.

To animate your cameras, drag a camera into the timeline editor. Advance the timeline to another place in the clip and position the camera at your desired endpoint; you'll see it smoothly animate between points.

Repeat to animate the camera in the current shot. To continue the sequence with another camera shot, add another clip and repeat the process, moving the camera to the next location for a seamless, dynamic animation.

This method allows you to create your cinematic edit directly on the timeline. Instead of rendering out multiple clips and then combining those in a third-party tool, you can combine all the cameras inside Envision.

Another way to animate cameras is to draw a path and assign a camera to it. Simply click and drag where you want the path to be. Bring the path up a little, and then use the “Move along path” option. You can utilize the transformations and manipulate your camera in all different axes and orientations to get creative effects.

To set the speed, drag the camera to your timeline to preview how it will move along the path. You can extend the length of the clip if you need a longer animation.

For extra emphasis, you can add sound to your presentation, such as rattling plates, street traffic, and people humming. To do this, select 'My soundtrack' and load a soundtrack you want, then click 'Preview' to hear the sound playing while you explore the animated scene.

Try Envision today
Envision enables you to tell a more impactful story and deliver stunning presentations that win projects. It handles detail-heavy scenes, assembles complex projects, and supports dynamic animation and lifelike characters without compromising on performance or quality.

Chaos suites are industry-specific software packages that provide better value and easier access to design and visualization tools for AEC professionals. Envision, along with Enscape, Veras, and Enscape Impact, is part of the ArchDesign Collection.

Try Envision for free