Animation. Point Counter during playback

nicjay

Is it possible to add a Counter for the points that are displayed during an animation?  So as the animation is sunning there is a counter running letting the audience know the total number incidents, like Earthquakes, that have happened during the animation.

NathanShephard

Hi nicjay,

Not specifically... The easiest way to do that would be to add a field to the earthquakes layer, calculate it with the numerical event order of the features (eg: earthquake order), and use labels on the point feature to not only show the magnitude of the quake, but also its number in the sequence. The down side is that the counter will move to be with each feature's location around the map (rather than in one spot).

You could get a little fancy and have a set of point features on the same location (with time stamps to match the time-aware data), and then the point-and--order-number-label would show in one place. Might look OK if the map extent isn't changing. 

An even more complex way to go would be to use dynamic text overlays.  Below is an attempt to give you the general approach to this idea, but it is tricky (given you want to animate through time, but show number values using an order-by value). Continue at your own risk.  😉

Idea - We have dynamic overlay text for the camera location, for map time, and for map range. Overlay text will draw on top of the screen (rather than as a feature label in the map itself) when exporting the animation. For numeric data, "range" is the better way to go - you enable it on a layer using the same "event order" field value as suggested for labels above. It can then be referenced as a filter for interactive use (eg: show me the 20th-30th earthquakes), and also for dynamic text in an animation. (For the earthquakes example, I presume you have authored a time-aware animation, where the keyframes have the changing time).  When you set a range value on a keyframe (eg: "1" on the first keyframe and "50" on the keyframe showing the 50th earthquake), we can display those values in the animation. Important note - the dynamic range value shown will be a linear progression between keyframes and might not align exactly with the time-based filter - that is, the 10th earthquake is unlikely to occur exactly half way between the 1st and 20th. You'd need to add more keyfames (with the applicable range value) to get them to align better.

Summary - 

• Not directly supported...
• Sneaky trick one (easy) = use feature labels
• Sneaky trick two (medium) = use feature labels on a new layer
• Sneaky trick three (hard) = careful use of 'range' into the animation + overlay text

Thanks,

-Nathan.