Experimenting with Animate mode

The Animate mode toggle controls how Ultra Fractal responds to changes that you make to a fractal. The basic rule is that if Animate mode is on, your changes are only applied to the current frame. Otherwise, your changes are applied to the entire animation.

Let's do some experiments with the rotation of the fractal to get a feel for how this works in practice.

• Move the time slider to frame 1 and verify that the Rotation Angle setting in the Location tab is set to 0. Also note the yellow marker before the input box. This shows that this parameter is animated and that there is a key at the current frame.
• Move the time slider to frame 100. The Rotation Angle value will now probably change, depending on how you rotated the selection box when zooming in earlier.
• Set Animate Mode to on, and change the Rotation Angle value to 60.
• Set Animate Mode to off, and move the time slider to frame 1 again.

Note that at frame 1, the Rotation Angle setting is still 0. That is because Animate mode was on when you changed it at frame 100. When Animate mode is on, changes only apply to the current frame. Let's try changing the rotation with Animate mode off to see how that works.

• Make sure Animate mode is still off and the time slider is at frame 1. Change the Rotation Angle setting to 90, which will rotate the fractal clockwise.

• If you now move the time slider (slowly) to frame 100, you will see that the entire animation has been rotated. That is because Animate mode was off when you changed the rotation. At frame 100, you will find that the Rotation Angle setting is now 150 instead of 60. It has been increased by 90 as well.

You can use this technique with any parameter if you need to adjust the entire animation. For example, you can move the animation, globally change the color density, and so on.

Let's now restore the animation to its previous state, this time by changing the keys at different frames individually.

• Make sure the time slider is still at frame 100 and enable Animate mode. Hold down the Alt key and click and drag inside the fractal window to rotate the zoomed-in fractal at frame 100 back to its original state.
• With Animate mode still enabled, move the time slider to frame 1. Enter 0 in the Rotation Angle input box. Set Animate mode to off again.

Note that it does not matter what tools you use to make changes — the selection box, Alt-dragging, or manually entering values. They all work together with the current state of the Animate mode toggle.

Also, note that you can easily change the value that was recorded for an animation key simply by going back to the frame where the key is located and adjusting the parameter while Animate mode is enabled.