Hello Forum,
I am new to Bongo, but excited by how easy it seems. My only problem is that I cannot seem to control the speed of playback when I preview my animation in the timeline. When I render out the video, I can get it quite smooth with lots of frames, but when I watch it in timeline it skips a lot. How do I change this?
Welcome Alexander 
The timeline’s length in seconds can be adjusted in Bongo’s Document Properties. Default is 10 sec.
Obviously in Preview the number of frames/sec Bongo can make is limited by the speed of the CPU of your computer and influenced by the complexity of the model and the display mode of the viewport(s).
The ‘Redraw only active view’ option (to be found in the Rhino’s Bongo Options, and by default set ‘off’) can help to shorten the redraw-process (when several windows are open) and hence smoothen the preview.
Thanks Luc, this is exactly what I needed.
Is it possible to set the time so that the speed of playback is consistent with the number of ticks?
Animations are extremely speed-sensitive-- it makes a big difference if you feel like you are running through a space, or walking, or walking slowly. I’d like to be able to work through the animation in a way where the speed is stable, and I can just add to the end without affecting the playback speed of any other part of the animation. I feel frustrated because every time I add to the end of the animation (i.e. increase the number of tics, and move the blue slider) everything gets faster… unless I go back into options and increase the overall length of the animation in a ratio equivalent to the number of tics I just added. I hope this question is clear.
Alexander,
I can sympathize with your frustration, but I fear there is no other way than diving into the options every time you change the overall length of the animation.
In my experience a comfortable way to get grip on time is to synchronize the number of timeline ticks with the future render frame rate. When the animation of e.g. 6 seconds will be rendered at e.g. 25 fps (frames/second) I use 150 ticks (6 x 25). An action of 2 seconds needs 50 ticks (2 x 25), adding 88 ticks means adding 3.5 seconds (approx. 88 / 25). This way you can also preview the animation frame by frame (stepping through tick by tick). Of course you can use another ratio (e.g. 10 of 20) making calculation simpler. Using a ratio higher than the video frame rate is seldom meaningful, I think.
You will almost never get the timeline to playback EXACTLY in real time, and I’ve noticed this in many other 3D software apps as well. Instead, try this technique I use: change your viewport to shaded and then change the Bongo:Renderer to ‘viewport.’
By rendering a shaded viewport, it only takes a minute or so to generate. If you render to a video (or sequence,) that will enable playback at a precise speed.
