Animate Settings

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The Animate settings are used when you are producing an animation. They are of no use when you are only interested in producing still images.

Rate controls

The Rate controls control how quickly aspects of the flame change as the animation progresses...

Rate of Change

The Rate of Change controls how quickly the flame changes shape as the animation progresses.

Rate of Rise

The Rate of Rise controls how quickly the flame appears to be rising, i.e. how quickly detail in the flame moves from the bottom to the top of the texture.

Loop controls

The Loop controls are used when you are producing a looped animation. These controls set the shader to produce a texture will will seamlessly repeat as your animation loops, i.e. as your animation moves from its final frame back to the first frame the flame shape and movement will be smooth and indistinguishable from the rest of the animation.

Current

This read-only control shows the current setting for the Loop frame count. When this is 0 (Zero), the shader will not produce a looped sequence of flames, i.e. for each successive frame the flame shape will be different. This is the normal setting for either still images or non-looped animation sequences.

New

Enter the desired Loop frame count in this control. This should be the number of unique frames in your looped animation then press the Calculate button, e.g. if your animation is 120 frames long, enter 120. The result will be a sequence of unique flame shapes from frames 0 through to 119. The flame produced in frame 120 will be identical to that produced in frame 0, frame 121's identical to frame 1's, etc. When you render your animation from frame 0 to 119 to a file and play it as a loop, you will have a seamless sequence.

Calculate

The Calculate button will take the value in the New field and calculate values for Rate of Change and Rate of Rise that are as close as possible to the current settings that will produce a seamless sequence of the requested length.

If the current settings for Rate of Change and Rate of Rise will result in a seamless loop without any change, the Current loop frame count will be updated. If new values are required, a dialog will appear displaying the calculated values and asking you to confirm the changes. If you press OK the changes will be made. If you press Cancel, no changes will be made to the other settings and the New setting will revert to the same value as the Current setting.