Creating animations

Creating an animation from a normal fractal is easy, but perhaps different than in other fractal 

programs. These steps show how to create a simple zoom movie. 

Click New on the File menu, and then click Fractal to open the formula browser. Select 

Mandelbrot in Standard.ufm, and then click Open. This creates a new default 

Mandelbrot fractal.

  1.  

(Note: Skip this step if you already have a 

fractal window

 open that you would like to 

turn into an animation.)

Move the time slider at the bottom to the far right. This sets the current frame to 100. 

  2.   (If you cannot see the time slider, click Animation Bar on the Options menu to reveal 

it.)

Click the Animate button on the 

animation bar

 to turn 

Animate mode

 on. In Animate 

mode, changes you make to the fractal are applied to the current frame only. This is 

necessary because we want to keep frame 1 as it is, and change frame 100 to 

something else.

  3.  

Note that the fractal window now shows red animation indicator marks in its corners, 

and "(Animating)" in the title bar. This shows that Animate mode is on.

Shift click inside the fractal window, hold the mouse button down, and drag upwards to 

zoom in. Release the mouse button when you are satisfied with the result. (See 

Normal 

  4.  

mode

 for more information about zooming.)

Congratulations! You have just made your first zoom movie. Drag the time slider to the 

left and right to see a real time preview.

  5.   Note that above the time slider, two key icons have appeared, one at frame 1, and one 

at frame 100. This shows that keys have been recorded at those frames.

To make the movie more interesting, let us add a rotate effect. Move the time slider to 

  6.   frame 50, and ensure that Animate mode is still on.

Enter 90 in the Rotation Angle input box on the Location tab of the 

Layer Properties 

  7.  

tool window

. This will rotate the fractal 90  clockwise at frame 50.

Click the Animate button again to turn off Animate mode, because we are done 

  8.   recording this animation for now. It is a good habit to leave Animate mode off normally 

to avoid unintended changes to your animations.

Click the Play button on the Animation bar to start playing a preview of the animation, 

or drag the time slider back and forth. 

  9.   Observe that the animation starts unrotated, rotates to 90  at frame 50, and then 

rotates back to normal at frame 100, while zooming in all the time. The frames where 

we did not explicitly set new values are interpolated to create a smooth animation.

Notes

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