Stopping, restarting, and stepping through an animation

You can use the movie player controls to play and pause your animation, to step forward or backward through the animation images, and to step to the first or last image in the animation sequence.

See Also
Controlling animation playback
Navigating to a specific frame in the animation
Controlling animations in multiple viewports

Context:

During animation, the movie player controls appear on the right side of the context bar.

If you display animations in multiple viewports, the movie player controls stop, restart, and step through frames in all synchronized viewports.

You can also use the right-most button in the movie player controls to launch the Frame Selector dialog box, which allows you to navigate directly to a particular frame in the animation. This tool is discussed in Navigating to a specific frame in the animation.

  1. Locate the movie player controls on the right side of the context bar.
  2. Click the movie player controls to execute the functions you want. The controls are listed below in the order in which they appear in the context bar, starting with the left-most arrow.

    Play/Pause Plays or pauses. When your animation is playing, this button displays the Pause symbol; when paused, this button displays the Play symbol.
    First image Stops play and displays the first image in the animation sequence.
    Previous image Stops play and steps to the previous image in the animation sequence.
    Next image Stops play and steps to the next image in the animation sequence.
    Last image Stops play and displays the last image in the animation sequence.
    Launch Frame Selector Opens the Frame Selector dialog box, from which you can navigate to a specific frame of the animation.