Keyframes Window

Keyframe Window

Applies to:FA 4

Concepts

Fractal files can hold 1 or more keyframes. Multiple keyframes are used to generate animations or are simply just a collection of nice fractals. Sometimes on the web, these collections are called Flame packs.

Keyframes vs Interpolated Keyframes
Flame files can also hold the output of animation, where each video frame is represented by a single keyframe. (At this point, they are no longer proper keyframes, just a collection of interpolated frames - usage by the application in either case is the same.)

Handling huge numbers of keyframes - Peer Windows
The output of fractal animation can create literally thousands of keyframes. If they are saved to a flame file, its not practical to try and render say 2,000 thumbnails at a time (unless you want to take a long nap hah!). So the Keyframes window supports the concept of batch size, which is the maximum # of keyframes to render and make visible at a time. The default batch size is 25. You can change this, but it will take longer to render the thumbnails.

So, for a large file, you can only look at a portion of the keyframes in the file at a time. A single flame file supports 2 peer keyframe windows (much like splitting a text editor into 2 panes). Each pane can be looking at different portion of the file.

You can drag a keyframe from a window to its peer window to move the keyframe.

This image shows the Frame Range selector. You can move the slider to see keyframes beyond the Batch size (only if your composite fractal has more keyframes in it than the batch size).

Opening the Keyframes Window from a Preview window

Click on the Frames Button
Main Menu: View > All Frames in File
Context Menu: Open Keyframes Viewer

Selecting Keyframes

You can select a keyframe by clicking on the keyframe. To add more keyframes to the selection, you can:

Click on a keyframe with the mouse while holding down the Shift key. This will add all of the keyframes between the previous selected keyframe and the clicked-on keyframe.
Click on a keyframe with the mouse while holding down the Command ⌘ key. This toggles the selection of the clicked-on keyframe.
Use Edit > Select All (⌘A) to select all of the keyframes

Creating a New Sequence With the Selection

Click the button to open the Sequence Selector.

Then click either:

Basic Loop/Morph - Selected Keyframes

or

Basic Keyframe Morph - Selected Keyframes

to create a new sequence with the selected keyframes.

Adding, Deleting, or Reordering Keyframes

Adding new keyframes

Do one of the following:

Drag & Drop onto Preview window (recommended)

Drag from any other window or thumbnail; or drag file from Finder.
Drop it onto the Preview window. This appends the dropped fractal as a new keyframe.

Drag & Drop in Keyframes Window

Drag from any other window or thumbnail; or drag file from Finder.
Drop it before first thumbnail, after last thumbnail, or between two thumbnails. The keyframes will be added there. Dropping on top of thumbnail will replace that thumbnail with the dropped one.

File > Append Keyframe Flame Files

You can select existing flame files whose contents will be appended as keyframes.

File > New Composite Fractal

Creates a new flame file whose keyframes are assembled from other existing flame files.

Deleting keyframes

Do one of the following:

Click the “-” Button.

Click this button to delete the selected keyframes.

Context Menu > Delete Frame

Deletes the selected keyframes.

Replacing a keyframe

Drag & Drop

Drag from any other window or thumbnail. or Drag file from Finder.
Dropping on top of another thumbnail will replace that thumbnail with the dropped one.

Reordering Keyframes - Drag & Drop

Using < & > Buttons (Recommended)

Select a keyframe with the mouse. Then click one of these buttons to move left or right.

Drag & Drop

Drag from any other window or thumbnail. or Drag file from Finder.
Dropping on top of another thumbnail will replace that thumbnail with the dropped one.

Keyframe Window Controls

Undo/Redo

Undo: Undo last keyframe change. Redo; Redo last change.
Undo All: Discard all changes and reset undo state.

Toolbar Controls

“-” Button: Delete the selected keyframes.
“>” Button: New ! Moves the selected keyframe to the right.
“<” Button: New ! Moves the selected keyframe to the left.
Thumbnail Video Frame Rate: Frame rate for thumbnail video.
Show Preview Video: Create and open the thumbnail video.
Show Peer: Show the Peer keyframe window for this keyframe window.
Animation Panel: Open the Animation panel.
Split by Variation Set: Split this composite fractal (with several variation sets) into several composite fractals each having a single variation set. Fractal animations are restricted to a single variation set. So this is done before creating an animation.
Open the Sequencer: New ! This opens the Select a Sequence dialog.
Batch Size: Maximum # of keyframes to be rendered at a time.

Video Frames Count

Below each keyframe’s thumbnail image is:

KF #: The Keyframe number (starts at 1).
Frames: New ! The number of video frames to allocate to a keyframe animation morph.
(Only applies to Keyframe Animation mode. Loop Morph Animation has a different way to control the number of video frames.)

Standard Thumbnail Services

Show the Preview window: Open the Preview window for this thumbnail.
Open the Variants Editor: Open the Variants editor to play with different random combinations.
Open the Super Variants Editor: Open the Super Variants editor to play with different random combinations.
Show the QuickLook window: Show the QuickLook window to see a temporary bigger image.
Show the fractal info as text.: Opens a non-editable view of the fractal info.
Show the fractal document contents as text.: Opens a non-editable view of the fractal text description.
Triangle Editor: Open the Triangle Editor for the fractal.
Show The Stash: Show the Stash.
Add to Stash: Add the selected thumbnails to the Stash.
Append duplicate keyframe: New ! Append a duplicate keyframe to this list of keyframes.