Animation & Timeline

Open the Timeline

Press T to show the Timeline at the bottom of the screen. The layout:

• Toolbar — play/stop, record, key cam, frame counter, duration, render button
• Navigator — zoomable mini-map strip, scroll and zoom the working range
• Track list (left) — all animated properties, grouped by category
• Work area (right) — the grid where keyframes live. Two modes:
  • Dope Sheet — keyframes as diamonds. Best for timing.
  • Graph Editor — F-curves. Best for easing and value adjustment.

Your first animation (60 seconds)

1. Press T to open the Timeline
2. Click the red circle (Record) in the Timeline toolbar
3. Leave the playhead at frame 0
4. Change any slider — say, Parameter A. A keyframe appears automatically.
5. Drag the playhead to frame 120 (2 seconds at 60fps)
6. Change the slider to a new value. Second keyframe appears.
7. Stop recording (click the red circle again)
8. Press Space to play

That's the whole loop. Anywhere you can move a slider, you can animate.

Transport controls

• Play / Pause (or Space while hovering the timeline)
• Stop — return to frame 0
• Loop / Once — playback mode
• Record — auto-keyframe on any slider change while on
• Key Cam — manually keyframe the current camera state (pose without motion)
• FRM — draggable frame counter
• LEN — draggable total duration
• Menu — FPS setting, delete all keys, delete all tracks

Camera animation — the "Key Cam" button

Fractals have infinite scale, so camera coordinates aren't simple X/Y/Z. GMT uses a unified system (fractal offset + local camera) that handles huge zoom ranges via logarithmic interpolation — so zooming from 1.0 to 1,000,000 feels constant-speed rather than accelerating wildly.

To keyframe a camera pose: position the camera where you want, then click Key Cam in the toolbar. Both position and rotation get keyed together.

Keyframe interpolation

Right-click any keyframe to change how the value moves between keys:

• Bezier (default) — smooth curves, fully customizable handles in the Graph Editor
• Linear — straight line, constant speed, sharp corners. Robotic motion.
• Step — instant jump at the next key. Good for staged value changes.

Graph Editor tangent types

With Bezier interpolation selected, handles control the curve shape. Useful types:

• Auto — automatically smooths based on neighbors
• Flat (Ease) — handle slope = 0. Classic "slow in / slow out"
• Unified — both handles move together. Smooth curve, manual shape.
• Broken — handles move independently. Sharp directional changes.

Post behaviors (loops and ping-pongs)

Right-click a track header in the Graph Editor sidebar to set what happens after the last keyframe:

• Hold — value stays at the last keyframe
• Loop — animation restarts
• Offset Loop — loops but each cycle starts where the last ended (great for continuous rotation)
• Ping-Pong — reverses direction
• Continue — extrapolates based on the exit velocity of the last keyframe

Soft selection (the sculpting shortcut)

Enable Soft Selection in the Keyframe Inspector. Moving one key then influences nearby keys with a smooth falloff — like sculpting a curve rather than moving individual points. Falloff types: Linear, Dome, S-Curve, Pinpoint. Adjust radius with Ctrl+drag.

Graph Editor tools

• Fit View / Fit Selection — zoom to content
• Normalize — scale all curves to the same height. Essential when comparing timing between tracks with very different value ranges (camera zoom vs parameter A).
• Euler Filter — fixes rotation wraparound (when angles jump 360°)
• Simplify — drag to reduce keyframes while preserving curve shape
• Smooth / Bounce — drag right for Gaussian smoothing (cleanup), left for spring physics (overshoot and elastic bounce). Right-click for configurable tension and damping.

LFO modulators

Repeating animations without manually placing keyframes. Up to 3 LFOs can run simultaneously, each targeting any parameter with a waveform (Sine, Triangle, Sawtooth, Pulse, Noise).

Parameters: target, period (seconds per cycle), strength, phase offset, smoothing.

Use case: subtle "breathing" on the fractal's power parameter — a Sine LFO at 4s period with 0.02 strength pointed at Param A adds organic life without any keyframes.

Copy / paste / duplicate

• Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V — copy/paste keys (works across different tracks!)
• Right-click → Duplicate Here — inline copy
• Right-click → Duplicate & Loop ×2 / ×3 / ×4 / ×8 — instantly repeat a pattern