Animating Gradients

You can animate gradients to create dynamic Paint objects in your composites, unusual background effects, or varying transparency on the alpha channel.

To animate a gradient:

1. To the right of the Playback controls, click the Animate button to turn on keyframing.
2. In Paint, press Home to make sure you are positioned at the first frame.
3. On the Modes controls of the Paint Controls panel, click the Gradient color mode button.



4. Click the Gradient thumbnail preview.

The Gradient controls appear.

5. Select a gradient type, direction, color, and opacity.
6. Using any of the drawing tools, create a Paint object in the active viewport (for instance, a filled rectangle).

The object is created with the specified gradient.



7. Press End to move to the last frame, and make sure the object is still selected.
8. Adjust the position, color, or opacity for the gradient tags. If necessary, use the Gradient option in the Toolbar tool options to achieve the necessary result.



9. Click Play to play through the animation. You can also scrub through the animation in the filmstrip.