Animation
Drive sliders with the clock, keyframe them, draw a Flipbook frame by frame, or let Particles fall.
Four ways to make something move.
Drive it with the clock#
Press Play in the title bar. A Time node outputs seconds. Wire it into any number input and that slider moves every frame. Drag the time readout to scrub while paused. Stop resets to 0.
Route it through Math, Remap, or Smooth to shape the motion: a Noise offset drifts, a Transform rotation spins, a Blur radius pulses.
Keyframe it#
Alt-click a slider that has a port beside it. An Animation Curve node appears, wired in and seeded with the current value. Click the curve to add a point, drag to move, right-click to delete. Straight lines between points, holds outside.
Draw it: Flipbook#
A Flipbook is a stack of paintable frames. Every brush and tool works on it.
| Key | Does |
|---|---|
| , / . | Previous / next frame. . past the last frame adds one. Draw, dot, draw. |
| N | Add a frame |
| O | Onion skin |
| [ / ] | Shorten / lengthen this frame's hold |
| Enter | Play / pause |
The strip along the bottom: click to select, drag to reorder, right-click for Duplicate Frame, Add Blank Frame, Delete Frame. Drag a frame off the node to pull it out as an Image.
The gear sets FPS (default 12), how many onion skin ghosts show, and Paper opacity. For paper color, right-click the node and pick Background Color. Wire a reference into Background to rotoscope.
Drop an animated GIF or WebP on the board and it becomes a Flipbook. Right-click an Image node for Split into Flipbook to slice a sprite sheet.
Render Video bakes the Flipbook into a video. In Magerie, wire that into a Video Exporter for an MP4 or GIF.
Let it fall: Particles#
A Particles node moves on its own. Set Motion to Flow for a field that drifts one way and wraps around the edges, or Burst for particles that are born, fly out, fall and fade. Press Play.
| For | Set |
|---|---|
| Rain | Shape Streak, Motion Flow, Direction 100°, Speed 150% to 250%, Length 8 |
| Snow | Shape Disc, Motion Flow, Direction 90°, Speed 5% to 15%, Sway 3% |
| Bubbles | Shape Ring, Motion Flow, Direction 270°, Speed 10% to 25%, Sway 2% |
| Sparks | Shape Streak, Motion Burst, Direction 270°, Angle Variation 60°, Gravity 100%, Life 0.8 s, Origin Y 90%, Blend Add |
Streaks point the way they travel, so rain slants with its Direction and sparks follow their arcs.
The background is black. To lay the spray over another scene, open BG (under Output) and pick None, the red-slashed square: the swatch turns checkered and the particles sit on nothing. Video has no transparency, so Image to Video shows a transparent background as black.
For a video that loops, set Loop and give Image to Video the same Duration. Looping rounds each particle's speed to whole trips across the image, so slow snow wants a Loop of 10 s or more.
Save it as video#
Anything driven by Time or a Curve plays live on the board. To bake it, wire the image into Image to Video, set Duration and FPS, and press Render.
Where to next#
- Video: cut, mix, and export
- Frames: animate a vector layout between states
- Generators: Time, Math, Remap, Smooth, Particles