Creating a time animation

A time animation allows you to control the time of the display (map, scene, or globe). The features, table rows, or rasters in your time-enabled data are displayed based on the current display time in the map, scene, or globe.

In creating a time animation, you'll first enable time on the datasets you want to visualize over time. This can be done on the Time tab of the Layer Properties dialog box, see Enabling Time on your data. Then you will create a time animation track, which you'll either play from start to finish using the play controls on the Animation Controls dialog box, or you'll preview particular time slices via the Time View tab of the Animation Manager. A time animation controls and updates the time of the display (map, scene, or globe). Based on this time, features, table rows, or rasters with a time stamp are drawn in the display.

Note:

• If you are just interested in visualizing your temporal data over time, you can use the Time slider functionality, which does not require you to create a time animation.

  Learn more about visualizing temporal data

• For creating a time animation, there has to be at least one time-enabled dataset in the current display (map, scene, or globe).

Before creating a time animation, make sure your data is ready to be animated. Read An overview of time animation and Enabling Time on your data before following the steps below. If you want to animate your graphs over time, read about animating your graphs before reading the steps below.

Steps:

1. Enable time on the data that you want to visualize over time. This can be done on the Time tab of the Layer Properties dialog box.
2. Click the Animation toolbar, click Customize on the main menu of the application, point to Toolbars, then click Animation.
3. Click the Animation drop-down arrow and click Create Time Animation.

   The Create Time Animation dialog box is opened stating that a new time animation track has been created.

Once the time animation track has been created, you can play the time animation using the Animation Controls or preview it using the Animation Manager.