Finding Good Animations

Finding and Creating Good Animations

Applies to:FA 5

Art of Finding Good Animations

Good animations start with good fractal keyframes.

Learn How to Create Good Fractals First

If you want to make animated videos with fractals, please make sure you can make fractal images first, as they are the basis of any animations you create. Animating fractals uses many concepts that build on top of the basic fractal creation process.

## Morph Style Animations

Smooth Morphs

In theory, any fractal can be morphed together, but in practice this does not work well.

First, you need to ask yourself: Does my video require smooth morph transitions or is the occasional shape “pop” OK ? Here a shape pop is defined as a sudden instantaneous change of shape.

One guaranteed way to get a shape pop is to morph 2 fractals with different fractal symmetry values. Interpolating different “power” parameter values will do the same thing with some of the most popular variation types.

Search for Morph Compatible Keyframes

Requiring smooth morphs take a lot more work to find keyframe combinations that morph smoothly.

There is no way to know by inspection whether two fractal keyframes will morph smoothly.
You have to use either the Cross Breeder or the Animation Segment Configurator and actually manually drag the morph amount slider. Watch the rendered display closely.

Try Different Lazyerz Permutation Settings

You also have the option to try different Layerz Permutation settings. That pairs up different combinations of transforms (and layers, if the fractals have more than 1 layer). For many fractals, there can be a huge number of possible Layerz permutations. You do not have to try them all !!

Playing with Layerz Permutations

Remember that there can be a large number of different morph combinations possible with two keyframes.

Both the Animation Configurator and the Cross Breeder allows you to try different Layerz morph permutations.

Sequencer’s Animation Segment Configurator. Here is how:

Select a keyframe segment in the top sequencer track. Click the edit button.
Select the Layer Keyframe Morph animation in the list.
Click the Video Preview button to open the video preview popover.
Set the Slider in the middle - halfway between the left and right endpoints.
Click the Change Layerz Shuffle button (found in the configurator pane to the right).
Click the Randomize Shuffle button until you get a nice intermediate fractal.
You can also click the Next Shuffle and Previous Shuffle buttons to step through the many shuffle combinations.

Cross Breeder Editor. Here is how:

Load two keyframes into the editor
Set the Slider in the middle - halfway between the left and right endpoints.
Click the Randomize Shuffle button until you get a nice intermediate fractal.
You can also click the Next Shuffle and Previous Shuffle buttons to step through the many shuffle combinations.
Click the Edit Shuffle button. Write down the Shuffled Indices order. You will need this later.
Close the Cross Breeder Editor. Go back to the Sequencer and open the Configurator on the corresponding Keyframe Morph Segment (holding the two keyframes you played with in the Cross Breeder).
Click the Setup Morph Keyframes row. Then click the Edit Shuffle button and order the rows to get the same shuffle pattern as you wrote down above.

Using Super Variants to find Compatible Keyframes

Let’s say you have 2 attractive keyframes but a “pop” occurs at either the start or end of the morph. This is very common.

Super Variants can be used to find replacement keyframes that do morph smoothly. This technique works most of the time, but is not guaranteed.

Begin with the 2 keyframes in the Cross Breeder window. Use the slider to see whether a “pop” happens at the beginning or end of the morph.
Click the Super Variants button. (I often add a “Randomize Colors” Lua Tweak script to get more interesting color gradients.)
You will get a batch of variants. Find two that you like. Select them.
Use the Context menu (right mouse button) and choose Open 1 Combined Preview for Selected.
That opens a new Preview window with those 2 keyframes.
Now click the Cross Breeder button and evaluate those keyframes’ morph.
These replacement keyframes probably do morph smoothly.
If the morph is smooth, copy those 2 keyframes back to the main fractal file and close this preview.

Don’t Be Too Picky

Keyframes are the basis of animation, but they change so much through animation, such that sometimes great keyframes lead to poor animations and vice versa. Finding good fractals is all about trial and error. Make use of the many tools the app provides to find great fractals.

You don’t have to make perfect keyframes either. With motion blur and fast animations, many fine detailed features disappear.

### Finding New Keyframes All Over the App ###

Use Copy as New Keyframe button in the rest of the app. As you are editing the keyframes in the Triangle Editor, be sure to save some extra keyframes using this button.

Another way to add keyframes: you can Drag & Drop from another fractal onto the Preview window of the target fractal. That appends it as a new keyframe to the fractal file’s list of keyframes.

Note: One limitation is that all keyframes for an animation must use the same Variation Set. The Keyframes window itself does not have this limitation.

The Keyframes window has a button Split by Variation Set to create new fractal files from the original keyframes that all use only a single Variation Set. You can check for multiple Variation Sets by clicking on the Animation Panel button, then click the Variation Set selector. It shows the number of keyframes used by each variation set.

You can drop fractals on either the Sequencer’s or Configurator’s keyframe thumbnails.

Use the Video Preview Tools Always

Use short video previews so you don’t waste a lot of rendering time redoing portions of the video. Make sure that the animation looks good before firing off that long render. Create a small, low quality render of the entire video to check how it will look.

The Sequencer’s little blue and green locators determine the time range for video previews.
Be sure to move them and define small portions of the video for video previewing.

Use the Sequencer’s Preview Slider to slowly preview different portions of the animation.

Animations Can be Created Using the Triangle Editor

The Animation Segment Configurator has a Duplicate as new Keyframe button. As you find interesting fractals, click that button to save the current fractal as a duplicate.

Non-Morph Style Animations

Morphing animations are easy to make, but inflexible as all properties are interpolated using 1 animation curve. All of the separate property value interpolations are wrapped into a single morph animation. This is the “bundled” approach.

Another easy approach is to use either the Variants (or Super Variants) editor to find good looking variants starting from another attractive fractal.

In FA 5, this is now the preferred approach to finding good animation material.

Use Variants Editor to make Interesting Animations

(The Super Variants editor can be used in the same way here.)

Open the Variants Editor on a good looking keyframe.
Use the Editor to create some great looking variants.
Select a variant, then do Edit > Copy to copy that variant.
You have 2 options here: Either create a morph animation segment or a Keyframe delta segment.
Use Paste Append in the sequencer to append a new Morph Animation segment to the currently selected Track. a 2 keyframe morph is created.
Hold down Option key, and then use Paste Append. This appends a new Keyframe Delta segment (with only 1 keyframe)) to the currently selected Track.

Keyframe Delta Animations

Keyframe deltas animation segments are created by taking 2 keyframes and capturing all their property differences as an keyframe delta animation segment. That animation segment can be used with the first keyframe to create a non morphed animation.

When applied to the first keyframe, these Keyframe Delta segments have interesting properties.

At morph amount 0.0, the output fractal is the first keyframe.
At morph amount 1.0, the output fractal is the second keyframe.

Thus, you can replace a morph animation segment with its equivalent Keyframe delta segment and get the same output.

How they differ from a simple morph

If you open the Keyframe Delta animation segment, you will see all of the separate property animations. These are the result of unbundling the morph animation.

You might find 25 to over 100 separate property animations in there !

You can replace each property’s original animation curve with different ones.

You can experiment with changing some of the property animation parameters.

You can use the animation configurator video preview to see whether your changes look good.

Finding Source Material Throughout the App

This app uses fractal image Drag & Drop and Copy/Paste extensively.

You can copy an animation segment and paste it onto either a Sequencer segment or within the Configurator.

You drag from a thumbnail on the variants Editor and drop it onto the Drag & Drop Animations Here region. That copies the equivalent animation.

With the Sequencer, you can Paste, Paste Merge, Paste Append which
pastes over the existing segment’s animations, adds animations to the segment, or appends a new animation segment with the pasted animations, respectively.

Animation Source Material to Copy From

Window	Where	Difficulty	Notes
Variants Editor	Copy Button	Easy	Copies equivalent non-keyframe segment
Variants Editor	Drag & Drop	Easy	Copies equivalent non-keyframe segment
Triangle Editor	Custom Animations	Easy/Medium	Copy non-keyframe segment
Super Variants	Configure Variants	Easy/Medium	Copy non-keyframe segment
Animation Configurator	Copy Button	Easy/Medium	Copy animation segment
Animation Configurator	Grid View	Medium/Complex	Copy segment
Cross Breeder	Custom Animations	Easy/Medium	Copy morph segment
Sequencer	Any Segment	Medium/Complex	Copy & Paste segments
Sequencer	Grid View	Medium/Complex	Copy segment

Where You Can Create Animation Videos

Note: An animation segment is comprised of one to many different parameter animations that run in parallel. You have complete control over the choice of the segment’s animation curve, including spline curves.

Window	Where	Difficulty	Limitations	Length	Curve
Triangle Editor	Quick-Spin	Easy	Single animation parameter	Short	No
Triangle Editor	Custom Animations	Easy/Medium	One animation segment	Medium	Yes
Super Variants	Configure Variants	Easy/Medium	One animation segment	Medium	Yes
Animation Configurator	Run Button	Easy/Medium	One animation segment	Medium	Yes
Cross Breeder	Make Video	Easy	Single Morph with Permutation Control	Short	Yes
Cross Breeder	Custom Animations	Easy/Medium	One morph segment	Medium	Yes
Keyframes Window	Animation Panel - Keyframe Animations	Easy	Multiple keyframe morphs	Long	Limited
Keyframes Window	Animation Panel - Loop/Morph Animations	Easy	Multiple looping/keyframe morphs	Long	Limited
Sequencer		Medium/Complex	Complex sequencing of many animation segments Beat Synching	Very Long	Yes