Adding gradient animation

Like any parameter in Ultra Fractal, you can also animate the gradient. Let s add some gradient 

animation to let the fractal fade in from a dark grayscale gradient to its current bright colors. First, 

we create the desired new gradient.

Click Gradient on the Fractal menu to open the 

  gradient editor.

Animating gradients

The gradient editor works together with the Animate 

mode toggle like all other tools in Ultra Fractal.

Set Animate mode to on, and move the time slider to frame 20.

Click Adjust Colors on the Gradient menu.

G     

On the HSL tab, set Saturation to  100, which removes all color from the gradient. Set 

Luminance to  40 to make the gradient darker. Click OK.

Drag the time slider back and forth to preview the result and observe that we have achieved just the 

opposite what we wanted. Let s fix that.

G     

Move the time slider to frame 1. Make sure the gradient editor is active and Animate mode 

is still on.

Click Copy on the Edit menu to copy the gradient to the Clipboard, as it is at the current 

frame. It is important that Animate mode is on while you copy the gradient, otherwise you 

  would have copied all animation keys as well. We just want the gradient as it is at frame 1. 

Move the time slider to frame 140, and click Paste on the Edit menu. Again, Animate 

mode must be on, because we want the paste operation to affect the current frame only. 

  Otherwise, the gradient for the entire animation would have been replaced by the pasted 

gradient.

Turn off Animate mode and drag the time slider back and forth again to view the effect. This is 

almost what we want, except that the dark gradient should be at the start of the animation. We can 

fix that with the Timeline tool window.

Click Timeline on the animation bar to open the Timeline tool window. Scroll down and 

  expand the Gradient category, its Color category, and all its four control points.

G     

Click on the leftmost animation key of the Color parameter of Control Point 1 to select it. 

Hold down the Ctrl key and click on the leftmost keys of Control Point 2 to 4 as well to 

add them to the selection. The timeline should look like the left picture below.

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