Rendering the animation

Now that the animation is finished, you can preview it with the Play button. However, you will 

probably want to view it as an AVI file with much higher quality. For that, you have to render the 

animation first.

Click Render to Disk on the Fractal menu to 

  open the Render to Disk dialog.

The Render to Disk dialog looks a bit different than you 

Rendering animations

might be used to, because it contains options specific to 

animations that are normally hidden.

G     

From the File Format drop down list, choose AVI movie. The Export Options dialog will pop 

up so you can set additional options for the AVI format.

G     

The list of compressors depends on what is installed on your computer. Some are better 

suited to fractal movies than others   it is best to experiment. For now, choose Cinepak 

Codec by Radius, set Quality to 100% and Key frame to once in every 15 frames. Click 

OK.

G     

If you prefer a different destination file than what Ultra Fractal automatically suggests, enter 

it into the Destination File input box, or click its Browse button.

G     

In the Animation area, set Frame Range to Entire Animation. You can use this option to 

render only a selected range of frames, or just the current frame.

G     

Set Motion Blur to Normal. This applies a motion blur effect to animated zooms, which 

makes them smoother and more natural looking.

The other options are the same as when rendering still images. You can set them as you prefer, but 

make sure to enable anti aliasing for the best results. If you check the Open when finished option, 

Ultra Fractal will automatically open the resulting AVI file in the default player, for example Windows 

Media Player.

G     

Click OK to start rendering. The 

Render to Disk tool window

 opens to display the rendering 

progress. Since animations are much more complex to calculate than still fractals, the 

render can easily take an hour or more, depending on the width and height that you 

selected for the final movie.

Congratulations! You have made it to the end of this tutorial. We have used most of the animation 

features of Ultra Fractal to make this animation, and you probably have many ideas for your own 

animations now.

For more information, please refer to the 

Animation

 chapter of the help file. Enjoy!

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