I've been looking for a simple LED fade in/fade out circuit when power is turned on/off for a 12 V LED. I have tried the following circuits but the problem is that I can't reach the full brightness of the LED that it reaches when simply connected to 12 V power supply.

I think it is due to the resistor which connects the capacitor to VCC. It allows the capacitor to charge slowly and show fade in effect, but also limits the current and thus max output voltage. I have tried altering the component values but if I decrease the value of the resistor the fade in effect gets faster.

Please help me with this.