The top section shows a list of all flames present in the currently opened file, or randomly generated flock. After every preview render completes, the latest updates to the current flame will be saved back to this list in memory, and the preview will be updated. Note that this can significantly slow down performance when using the zoom parameter because it will greatly increase the number of iterations done.

The individual flame or the entire file will not be saved back to disk unless you specifically do so.

Root node

The root node in the tree represents the open file.

Single click

Rename the file. This name will be used when saving to disk.

Double click

Expand or collapse all flames. This is seldom used.

Child nodes

Each of these represents a flame within the currently opened file. The current flame will have its checkbox checked. This is not user editable and is only shown to differentiate between the current flame, and other flames which might have been single clicked on.

More than one flame can be selected, and the selections can be disjoint by using the shift and control keys. In addition, the following operations are supported.

Single click

Edit the name of the selected flame. This will be used as the name of, and within the Xml file when saved back to disk.

Double click

Set the flame as the current one. This will overwrite any edits currently pending, so be sure to save them first before switching between flames. This will also reset the undo list.

Drag

The selected flames can be dragged to a new location. If the mouse cursor is above the middle of a flame, the drop will go above that flame. The drop will go below if the mouse cursor is below the middle of a flame.

Shift + delete

Delete the selected flames. Note the shift key is required to prevent confusion from using the delete key when editing the name of a flame.

Shift + F1, F2…

Switch to the flame whose index matches the function key. Pressing Shift + +/- cycles forward or backward through the open flames in the file.

The bottom section shows a group of controls used for generating an animation sequence from the flames shown in the library tree above. This functions as a GUI replacement for EmberGenome.

After a sequence is generated, its contents will be shown as thumbnails in the sequence tree below. These are fixed and cannot be dragged, renamed or edited in any way. The only part of the sequence tree that can change is the root node which specifies the filename that will be used for saving to disk.

There is also a node at the top which shows a preview of the animation by cycling through all of the generated preview frames. The visibility of the node can be toggled with the Animate button.

The sequence can then be sent to the Final Render dialog to be rendered as an animation. When this is done, the Render All and Render as Animation Sequence checkboxes are automatically checked when the dialog is shown.

You can either set specific fixed values that will be used for the duration of the sequence or use random values between a specified range.

Start count

This number will be added to the names of all of the output flames. It’s useful when using video rendering software such as ffmpeg which prefers file names to be in a certain range. If you have no such need, just leave this as 0.

Start/Stop previews

While generating a sequence is fairly quick, rendering its previews can take a while. If you don’t care about the previews, you can stop them with the Stop Previews button. Click Start Previews if you have previously stopped rendering the previews, but want to start doing so again.

Start/Stop flame

By default, all flames in the current file will be used as keyframes when generating the sequence. However, Start Flame and Stop Flame can be used to specify a subset of the total to be rendered. Note that the values are 0-indexed, and the Stop Flame value is inclusive.

All

Used to specify that all flames in the current file will be used as keyframes. It sets Start Flame to 0 and Stop Flame to the size of the current file minus one.

Random

Each checkbox under the random heading applies to the spinboxes on its row. If unchecked, the value in the first spinbox is used throughout sequence generation. If checked, a random value will be chosen between the first and second spinbox values on its row. This random value will change at the appropriate place as detailed below.

Stagger (EmberGenome equivalent: –stagger)

Stagger is described on the Sequence section of the EmberGenome page, so a duplicate explanation here will be omitted. Stagger can be disabled with a value of 0.

When Random is checked on this row, a random value between the first and second spinbox values will be chosen for stagger before the blending process begins for each flame.

Rotations (EmberGenome equivalent: –loops, CW: –cwloops)

The number of times each flame should rotate before beginning to blend to the next flame. This value can be fractional to rotate a non-integer number of times. It can also be zero to omit rotation altogether.

When Random is checked on this row, a random value between the first and second spinbox values will be chosen for the number of times to rotate before the rotation process begins for each flame.

Check the CW checkbox to make the rotations turn clockwise, else they will turn counter-clockwise.

Frames per rotation (EmberGenome equivalent: –loopframes)

If the rotation value below is greater than 0, then this value specifies how many frames each rotation is broken into. Smaller values give faster rotations, and larger values give slower rotations.

Note that this differs from EmberGenome. In that program, only a single value --nframes is used for specifying the rotation frames and blending frames. Here, a separate value can be used for each.

When Random is checked on this row, a random value between the first and second spinbox values will be chosen for the number of frames per rotation before the rotation process begins for each flame.

Blend frames (EmberGenome equivalent: –interpframes)

The number of frames it takes to blend from one flame to the next. Smaller values give faster blends, and larger values give slower blends.

When Random is checked on this row, a random value between the first and second spinbox values will be chosen for the number of blending frames before the blending process begins for each flame.

Rotations per blend (EmberGenome equivalent: –interploops, CW: –cwinterploops)

The number of times each flame should rotate while blending to the next flame. This value is an integer, and can be zero to omit rotation while blending altogether.

When Random is checked on this row, a random value between the first and second spinbox values will be chosen for the number of times to rotate while blending between each flame.

Check the CW checkbox to make the rotations turn clockwise, else they will turn counter-clockwise.

Linear (EmberGenome equivalent: –unsmoother)

Whether the time used for each interpolation frame should proceed linearly, or non-linearly. For the latter case, frames closer to a keyframe will move more slowly, and frames near the middle of two keyframes will move more quickly.

Generate

Generate the sequence from the main library file, using the values specified in the controls. When sequence generation completes, the thumbnails will begin rendering. Click Stop Previews to abort this process.

Render

Send the generated sequence to the Final Render dialog with the Render All and Render as Animation Sequence checkboxes automatically checked.

Save

Save the generated sequence out as a file.

Open

Open an existing sequence file to be loaded into the sequence tree. More than one file can be selected, although this may not give a visually appealing sequence if the flames used to create them were not contiguous between files.

Animate

Show the Rendered Animation tree item which shows a preview of what the animation will look like.

Clear

Clear all nodes in the Sequence tree.