Fossils & Archaeology: one fossil's story, drawn on the beat

Every look of the visualizer is a moment in the life of one fossil after it is found: The Blueprint, The Dig, Deep Time, The Great Hall, The Prep Lab and The Collections. Open it from its template page, in Classic or Studio, as the look of a Timeline clip, or as a layer over another look; the preview, the still and every export draw the same frames.

It follows what the museums themselves show. A mounted skeleton is planned on paper before a bolt goes in, with its dimensions and a scale bar; a dig is strung in a grid of lettered squares so every find has an address; the rock's layers are named by the international chart of geologic time with the age of each base; a skeleton is mounted on a steel armature in the great hall; the rock is chipped from the bone with an air scribe behind the lab's glass; and the cases show the fossils beside the things people made: an amphora put back together from its shards, coins, a flint point and a clay tablet.

• Open the Fossils & Archaeology template

Each look is one moment of the story:

• The Blueprint: A mount plan on a drafting sheet: the skeleton drawn bone by bone on the beat, the skull first and the limbs last, dimensioned and labelled with a scale bar and a title block; once drawn it walks on the sheet, and on the drop it strides.
• The Dig: The pit from above, strung in a grid of lettered squares: a square brushed down each beat until the skeleton lies bare in the rock, the trowel and brush at work and the dust rising; on the drop the field jacket goes on round the skull.
• Deep Time: A cliff cut through the rock: every period named with its age, a fossil in each layer, the view sinking through time with the song; on the drop the boundary at 66 million years glows.
• The Great Hall: A skeleton mounted on its armature under the hall's arches and skylights, turning its head to the beat while visitors stroll below and the lamps rise with the song.
• The Prep Lab: The lab behind the glass: a field jacket open on the bench, the air scribe chipping the rock from the skull on the beat, chips flying, the microscope's ring light glowing; on the drop the skull lies clean.
• The Collections: A wall of cases lit in turn on the beat: an ammonite, a trilobite, an insect in amber, a fern, coins, a flint point, a clay tablet, and an amphora put back together from its shards through the phrase.

Three skeletons are built bone by bone in metres, so the blueprint's dimensions and scale bar name real sizes: a theropod after Tyrannosaurus, about 12 metres long; a long-necked sauropod after Diplodocus, about 24 metres; and a ceratopsian with its frill and horns after Triceratops, about 9 metres. The Specimen setting picks one, or Rotate brings a new one each section of your song. Each skeleton is named by the genus it is after and the age of its rock, never by a nickname.

Something is found on every beat: a bone drawn on the sheet, the skull first and the limbs last; a square brushed down in the dig; a chip of rock taken from the skull in the lab; a shard of the amphora set back in place. At the default Discovery the whole skeleton is found by the phrase's sixth bar, and once drawn it walks on the sheet. The drop is the payoff: the find is shown whole in its first beat, the skeleton strides, the field jacket goes on round the skull, the boundary at 66 million years glows in the rock and the skull in the lab lies clean.

The great hall's skeleton turns its head to the beat and sways its tail through the phrase while visitors stroll below, and in Deep Time the view sinks through the periods and rises again. Every phrase begins the story again, so with no song analysis a phrase-long clip starts and ends on the same frame and loops without a seam.

The fossils are animals and plants: dinosaurs, an ammonite, trilobites, a fish, a fern, an insect in amber and a shark's tooth. The archaeology is the things people made, never people's remains. Nothing comes from a film, a show or a theme park.

Museum light is slow and low, and so is this visualizer's: the lamps, the skylights, the case lights and the boundary's glow rise with the song and never with the kick, and each goes through the flash limiter first, which holds flashes to fewer than three a second. The drafting grid, the dig's strings, the rock's bedding, the hall's arches and floor, the lab's tiles and the gallery's panels are repeating patterns, so each asks the site's pattern guard how much contrast it may have, and the rock's faces keep to a narrow range of brightness so the cliff can sink through time without its layers flickering. The Contrast setting lowers it all further.

Beside the colours, speed, glow and the settings every look has, the visualizer has its own, labelled the same in every editor, and SW Agent can set each one by its name:

• Specimen: Which skeleton: a theropod (after Tyrannosaurus), a long-necked sauropod (after Diplodocus), a ceratopsian with its frill and horns (after Triceratops), or Rotate for a new one each section of the song. Choose Rotate, Theropod, Sauropod or Ceratopsian.
• Discovery: How much is found on each beat: the bones drawn, the squares dug, the rock chipped away. At 1 the skeleton is whole by the phrase's sixth bar. From 0 to 1.5.
• Drawing: The blueprint's paper: white line on Prussian blue, a field notebook's sepia on cream, or the line glowing on the dark. Choose Cyanotype, Parchment or Night.
• Labels: How many labels: the bones' names, the dimensions and the scale bar, the periods and their ages, the case labels and catalogue numbers. 0 shows none. From 0 to 1.
• Grid: How strong the drafting grid, the dig's strings and the stone's bedding are. From 0 to 1.
• Dust: Dust in the light, pencil dust on the sheet and the chips of rock flying in the lab. From 0 to 1.
• Variation: Another dig of the same story: the specimen chosen, the order the squares are dug and the rock chipped, the catalogue numbers. The same number always gives the same. From 0 to 99.
• Gallery light: How bright the lamps, the skylights and the case lights are. Museum light: slow and low, rising with the song, never a flash. From 0 to 2.

Layer assets and the Layers tool offer each moment's own layers (the drafting sheet, the skeleton, the dimensions, the labels, the dig's grid and tools, the rock, the finds, the hall, its lamps and its visitors, the lab and the cases) on their own, to add to any project. Motion graphics has every moment as a design to customize, and the Stream studio has it in its rotation.

• Browse Layer assets

Ask for it in your own words: "make a fossil visualizer", "a dinosaur skeleton blueprint for my song", "an archaeology dig video" or "a natural history museum look", and SW Agent builds the project on it. In an open project, say "switch to the great hall", "show the triceratops" or "turn the labels off"; each change is one step of undo in Classic and in Studio.

Through our MCP server, get_engine lists the visualizer's moments and settings, and build_editor_setup opens Classic or Studio on any of them.