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Color Cycling

Color cycling is a classic animation technique where colors are animated by shifting their palette indices instead of modifying pixel data.
Because the pixels keep the same index, changing the palette order creates the illusion of movement (for example flowing water, lava, lights, or waves) while remaining extremely efficient.

In PixelOver, color cycling is achieved using Match indexation with the Shift value.
Shifting the match palette offsets color positions over time, causing each color index to be replaced by the next one in the sequence.

This approach has several advantages:

  • no pixel data is modified
  • animations remain lightweight
  • results are perfectly consistent across frames

How to create color cycling

Here is the workflow to create a color cycling animation:

  1. Create or generate an indexation palette from your layer.
  2. Sort the palette so the colors are ordered in the direction of the cycle.
  3. Enable Match indexation and duplicate the palette as the match palette.
  4. Animate the Shift value over time.
  5. Enable looping on the animation.

As the Shift value increases, colors will cycle through the palette, creating a smooth looping animation.

Here a video example about how to make a color cycling animation in Pixelover :