Animating locations

Although you can do much more with animation in Ultra Fractal, the most obvious thing to animate is the location of the fractal to create zoom movies. The location is controlled by five parameters on the Location tab of the Layer Properties tool window: Center, Magnification, Rotation Angle, Stretch, and Skew Angle.

To animate the location, first set Animate mode to on and move the time slider to the frame where you want to create animation keys, as described in Creating animations.

Use the same zooming, panning, and rotation features that you would normally use (see Normal mode and Select mode). They work the same as when Animate mode is off, except that only the current frame is modified, instead of the entire range of frames.

If you use Select mode, Ultra Fractal always inserts keys at the current frame for all five location parameters, even when the value of the parameter has not been changed. For example, if you just zoom in without stretching or skewing, keys for Stretch and Skew will also be inserted although their values have stayed the same. If you do not want this, use Normal mode instead.

Of course, you can also animate the location by changing one of the location parameters directly while Animate mode is on. You can also edit the corner coordinate parameters in the lower half of the Location tab, but this just indirectly changes the normal parameters in the upper half.

Always make sure whether Animate mode is on or off. If you zoom in while Animate mode is off, this will transform the entire animation, which usually is not what you want.

The behavior of the Copy, Paste, and Reset buttons in the Location tab behave depends on whether or not Animate mode is on, providing flexible ways to copy and clear animation keys. See also Editing animations.

		Animate mode on		Animate mode off
		Copies the location at the current frame to the Clipboard, without any animation keys.		Copies the location for the entire frame range to the Clipboard, including all animation keys.
		Sets the current location to the location on the Clipboard, inserting animation keys when necessary, just as if you entered those values manually. You must turn off Animate mode before pasting locations with animation keys (copied when Animate mode is off).		Sets the current location to the location on the Clipboard, overwriting any animation keys. If the location on the Clipboard has no animation keys (copied with Animate mode on, or from a non-animated fractal), any animation keys in the current location will be removed.
		Resets the location at the current frame to the default location for the current fractal formula, inserting animation keys when necessary.		Clears all animation keys and resets the location to the default location for the current fractal formula.

Next: Animating parameters