While EmberGenome can be used to generate an animation sequence, it’s much better to do it using the Library tab in Fractorium. This article covers tips and tricks for getting the most out of your animation efforts.

Preview scrolling

Scrolling up and down the sequence thumbnail tree is a great way to see exactly what your animation will look like when its rendered.

Xform rotation

On the Xforms tab, you will see a checkbox titled Animate. This represents a per-xform value that specifies whether the xform will be rotated when doing rotations during sequence generation.

By default, all xforms have this set to true. However, it can be interesting to experiment with what happens when only certain xforms are rotated. When doing this type of fine grained tuning of your animation sequence, you should set the first and last flame to be equal to the flame you are inspecting. Toggle the Animate value on various xforms in the flame, set rotations to 1 and click Generate. This will help you quickly get a feel for what this flame’s rotation phase will look like.

Apply all

If you are generating a sequence, then you likely have a file open which has many flames in it. When adjusting values relevant to animation on the Flame tab, it would be very tedious to have to manually set the values in each flame. This is where the Apply All checkbox at the top of the Flame tab comes in very handy.

The values for Interpolation and Affine Interpolation are used during sequence generation. So if you want a consistent look across the sequence, experiment with changing these values while Apply All is checked, then click Generate.

The values for Temporal Filter Width and Temporal Filter Type are used when actually rendering the animation in the Final Render dialog, not when generating the sequence. However, they are stored with the sequence when its created. So this is another place where changing these values while Apply All is checked can be very powerful. Unlike the values noted above, these will not make any difference in the appearance of the sequence preview thumbnails. Their effect will only be seen once animation is performed.

Temporal samples

This value can safely be ignored when working alone since it can be set right before animation is performed in the Final Render dialog. However, if you want to share the sequence file with another user, you can set this to the desired value with Apply All checked so that they can render the animation right out of the box without having to change anything.