Animation curves are a great tool to improve your animations. You just need to know, how to use them.
Finally, type in the values
Finally you can type in exact values for every keyframe point in Fiesta for Mac. This allows you to create precise laser show animations.
Time and Value allows you to edit X and Y of every keyframe point
It’s sometimes a lot faster to type in 50% to set the keyframe in the middle of the animation than using mouse. Of course you can copy/paste values, which is always handy.
Practical curved segments
Since we use polyline (line made of several keyframe points) to define animation curves, you can also create curved segments.
Curved segment on animation line
To change segment to curved just select some keyframe point and use right mouse click to display context menu. Click Curved to change segment to curved. As you can see, two additional control points appear. They allow you to change segment’s shape.
Why use curved segments? It’s easy – to use acceleration and deceleration in your animations. Decelerate and accelerate really help to fine-tune your animations. They improve the laser show and probably most of the people don’t even know why, but the laser show looks a lot better. But of course, it takes some time to adjust the curve segment to desired value.
Reset curve to default
Quite often you don’t like your animation curve anymore. It wouldn’t be practical to create whole event from scratch. That’s why you can reset curve to default. Just right mouse click on curve editor and select Default timegraph.
Undo everywhere
Long requested feature – there is Undo/Redo everywhere in Fiesta for Mac. Even you can use it in curve editor. It remembers all your changes, no matter if it’s chaning keyframe point position or changing segment to Curved/Linear and back. For easier orientation you can even see the name of the Undo/Redo step in the Edit menu. To use this feature quickly you can of course use standard keyboard shortcuts ⌘C and ⌘V.
Repeat curve animations
Quite often you need to repeat certain animation curve. That’s why there is Repeat setting in every animation property. Just a note, the Repeat can be different for every animation property. This allows you to e.g. repeat Size animation multiple times while one rotation cycle.
Repeat to repeat animation curve several times
You can also set the Type of repeat.
- Constant – the value after first cycle remains constant (equal to last keyframe point value)
- Repeat – standard repeat
- Inverse repeat – every second step is inverted in X axis
All are pretty clear to understand after you test them and sometimes they speed up your creation process (especially the Inverse repeat).
Some more tools to edit animation curves?
Yes, once you click right mouse button on curve editor, you get context menu with all the remaining functions:
- Delete – delete selected keyframe point. You can also use Delete key (might be ⌘+Backspace on original Mac keyboard).
- Line/Curve – set following segment type
- Default timegraph – set the selected time graph to default
- Copy/Paste graph – allows you to copy/paste graphs between events
- Invert X/Y – invert whole graph in X or Y axis
As you can see, Fiesta for Mac contains rich tools, how you can edit your animation curves. It’s improving your creation process a lot after you get used to use them.