Getting Started

• Welcome to DP Animation Maker

• How to Start with DP Animation Maker

How to

• Export Looped Animation
• Set Transparent Background

Brushes

• Nature Brushes
• Cloud Brush
• Fire Brush
• Light Brush
• Stream Brush
• Day to Night Brush
• Water Brush
• Warping Brushes
• Background Copy Brush
• Bend Brush
• Drift Brush
• Radial Wave Brush
• Rotation Brush
• Turn and Fold Brushes
• Wave Brush
• Zoom Brush
• Glitter Brushes

Static Animations

• Electric Discharge
• Explosion
• Lightning
• Light Beams

Animation timings

The timings in DP Animations allows you to set when and how animations appear in your scene. It makes possible creating original effects unachievable any other way.

The timings controls are located at the bottom of the working area:

The first button opens the Timeline Manager window where you can edit all timings with manual timing scheme (see below) in one place.

The second button restarts all animations in the scene. It brings all manual and random timelines to the beginning and restarts particle effects too.

The last two options depend on the selected animation in the list of animations in the right panel. For most animations you can set the timing scheme of the selected animation and choose the parameter to fade in and fade out. Here is how these options work.

It determines when the animation should change. There are four timing schemes available:

Continuous

In this scheme the animation does not change, it plays continuously. This scheme is handy for global effects (like weather) or effects that shouldn’t change over time and do not depend on any other animations.

Note: if Continuous scheme is selected, there are no other settings available in the timings area.

Random

This scheme makes the animation play at random. In particular, the animation starts at random times, lasts for some random time period and then ends. Use this scheme for chaotic processes that do not have any regular pattern, like shining stars in the night sky, sparks of a campfire, electric charges, lightning bolts and so on.

If you select Random scheme, the following settings are available:

You can specify the time range of a pause (when the animation does not play) in seconds, the time range of a play and the amounts of fade in and fade out of the animation. DP Animations will select values in the specified range randomly.

[video]
Example: The ghost randomly shows up and vanishes.

Manual

Choose this scheme if you need manually adjust the timings of the selected animation. This is a powerful option that allows you to create many interesting effects.

When you select this scheme, the timeline is shown at the right:

The default timeline length is 10 seconds, but you can configure longer duration by entering the desired value into the corresponding box. To add a new timing interval to the timeline, make sure the Add/Edit button is selected and click anywhere in the timeline. This will add a new timing interval as shown below:

The black vertical line indicates the current playing time.

The green zone corresponds to the play subinterval. During this time, the selected animation plays as you specified in its settings.

The yellow zones in the beginning and in the end of the timing interval correspond to fade in and fade out subintervals respectively. We will cover fade in/out settings below.

You can adjust the position and length of each subinterval with the mouse. To remove an timing interval, select the Delete button and click the timing interval you want to delete from the timeline.

If you need to specify the exact length of any subinterval (a yellow or green zone) or delay between two timing intervals, select the Resize button and left-click the subinterval or the space between timing intervals. The length will be set to the value specified in the box near the Resize button. And if you right-click the subinterval (or space between timing intervals), its current length is put into box, which is convenient if you need to measure the play subinterval or one of fades.

You can add as many timing intervals to the timeline as you want. This allows you to configure complex animation patterns with varying durations and fade in and fade out settings.

[video]
Example: Police car red and blue lights flashing in turns.

Dependent

This scheme allows you to link the timings of the selected animation with the timings of any other animation, or simply synchronize them. When you select this scheme, the timings settings change to this:

Here, you can specify the parent animation the selected animation should be dependent on. Then, you select one of two dependency variants.

The “Exact parent’s timing” option uses the timings settings of the parent animation for the current animation too. Simply put, both animations will play at the same time and use the same fade in and fade out subintervals.

The “Parent’s starting time only” option means the child animation starts at the same moment (or with some delay) as the parent animation, but you can set the play duration and the fade in and fade out subintervals specifically.

With the Dependent option you can create nice synchronized effects when one animation causes the other. For instance, let’s imagine a scene: a dragon spits a firebolt that ignites a tree. The tree burns for some time and then the fire goes out leaving only smoke. Here, you will have to synchronize three effects. Of course, you can use the Manual mode for this too, but with the Dependent option the same effect is achieved easier.

[video]
Example: Synchronizations of the lightning and the flash.

Finally, this dropdown list allows you to set which parameter of the selected animation should fade in or out. For most animations the only one option is available, it make the animation appear/disappear in/from the scene. But for some animations additional choses are available.