Apophysis Help (v2.08)
I produced some help documentation for a friend of mine who was learning Apophysis and have decided to post it.
Rendering A Simple Apophysis Flame Using A Script File
Open Apophysis and you will get 100 random flames to play with. You can see them in the list on the left hand side.
Make sure that 5 is set in the Rendering Quality box which is directly underneath the Variation menu.
This gives you the quality of image you see on the screen every time you produce a new flame and speeds things up.
I normally set this to 100 only when I think I have created a flame that I like as this gets rid of a lot of the grainy areas.
I then set it back to 5 if I am happy with it.
The image below is a typical flame you get when loading Apophysis and its a flame that’s not must use to anyone really.
Select Script => Open and select a script (this example uses one called Rabbit Hole) and then click on the Run Script <F9> icon (the little green triangle).
After about 5 seconds or so you will see the results that the script has produced.
Next select the ‘Gradient’ icon which is directly below the ‘Options’ menu and select the Gradient tab.
Select a gradient colour that you think looks good and when you select a different colour gradient you will see the flame in the Apo window change colour after a few seconds whilst it loads your selected colours.
You can also slide the Rotate sliding bar for different colouring effects.
Another option is Image Size. You can keep increasing or decreasing the ‘Scale’ size so that the flame fits neatly into the canvas.
You then click on Apply to accept the changes when you like what you see.
The following window is an example of how things have changed after some editing changes:
Change the ‘Quality Setting’ value from 5 to 100 and after about 30 seconds you will see a much better quality flame (as shown below):
You can then render this properly by hitting the ‘Render’ button (the little yellow cog) and you get the following screen:
Choose where you want to save the file in the ‘File name’ line.
Set the ‘Quality’ to 2000 as this gives a good enough quality flame. A setting of 4000 massively increases the render times.
Postwork can be performed within Apophsis afetr it has rendered, simply tick the Postprocess render option.
While its rendering you will see this window:
Please note that you can do anything else in Apophysis whilst a flame is rendering.
When its finished rendering the ‘Remaining’ time will say 00:00:00:00.
That’s it, just hit the Close button and you will have a jpeg in the directory that you entered at the Render stage.
Editing Apophysis Fractals
For this example I’ll use the Starts-Of-Fire fractal as shown below:
I will be concentrating on Editor (F4), Adjust (F5), Gradient (F6), Image Size, Translate Image and Rendering (no icon for this):
Editor (F4)
Selecting this option will give you the following dialog:
I have selected yellow triangle number 2 from the ‘Transform’ drop down list and changed the ‘disc’ setting from 0 to 0.25.
I have also dragged the yellow triangle shape around the black grid area a bit.
You can see in the little fractal preview window in the top right that the fractal has changed.
If you like what it has done just close the window down via the X in the top right hand corner.
As you can see there are six tabs on the Transform Editor, Triangle, Transform, Colors, Variations, Variables and Xaos.
I have never found any documentation on these, basically it’s a case of selecting them, changing settings here and there and seeing what happens.
Sometimes nothing happens but sometimes wonderful fractals appear. Remember, if it all goes wrong you can CTRL+Z to undo.
Adjust (F5)
Selecting the ‘Adjust’ icon shows the Adjust dialog with the Camera tab selected:
Basically you have Zoom, X position, Y position and Rotation on this tab.
- Zoom: This zooms in and out from the fractal making it larger or smaller. I never use this option as it leads to massive render times (there is another way, see ‘Image Size’ section)
- X position: This moves the fractal left and right within the frame.
- Y position: This moves the fractal up and down within the frame.
- Rotation: As it says, this rotates the fractal within the frame
Gradient (F6)
Selecting the ‘Gradient’ icon shows the Gradient tab in the Adjust dialog:
Gradients are the colours that Apophysis uses to colour in your fractal.
- You can select one of the preset Apophysis colour gradients by selecting it from the ‘Preset’ drop down field. When you have selected one you fractal will automatically be updated in the preview window.
- You can also slide the ‘Rotate’ bar that will shift the gradient colouring within your fractal.
- One cool feature is ‘Smooth Palette’. This is activated by clicking on the bottom right hand icon (the brown gradient icon). This allows you to select one of your own images … Apophysis will take all the colours from within your selected image and load them into your fractal. This is good if you have an image that you particularly like the colours used.
The following example shows what has happened with a different gradient palette and also moving the Rotate slider:
Image Size
Selecting ‘Image Size’ gives you this dialog:
- Here you can change the width and height of your fractal canvas area.
- ‘Scale’ can be changed up or down and this zooms in or out from the fractal.
Translate Image
Basically you click on this icon and you can then drag your chosen fractal around the canvas. This is particularly useful when positioning it correctly.
Rendering
As stated earlier there is no icon for this (not in v2.08 or earlier anyway).
It can be accessed by selecting either Adjust, Gradient or Image Size. Then just select the Rendering tab as shown below:
Here you can alter the Gamma, Brightness and Vibrancy by use of their individual slide bars.
You can also change the fractal background colour by clicking on the black box next to ‘Background’.
Any changes made here will automatically be shown in the preview window.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of features but it details the ones that are used the most.
Saving Apophysis Fractals & Flames
Apophysis flames are saved in .flame files. Note that it is not the actual .jpeg/.png image it saves, it’s just the variables and settings it requires to re-display the flame within Apophysis.
To save a flame for re-use or archiving simply select ‘File’ followed by ‘Save Parameters’ (or CTRL+S). You will be presented with the following dialog:
The ‘File name:’ line is for you to choose the directory and also the name of the .flame file you wish to save your work to.
The ‘Title:’ line is for you to input the name of what you want to call your chosen flame. This defaults to the name of the Apophysis generated name which you can of course use if you cannot think of what to call your fractal.
Once you have complete the 2 fields, just select ‘Save’.
To open your .flame file just select ‘File’ followed by ‘Open’ (or CTRO+O), navigate to and select your .flame file. It will open as follows:
The name of the flame file will be at the top (Tony.flame in this example) and the title of the individual fractal will show on the left hand side (Rabbot-Hole-001 in this example).
You can save many individual fractals within the same .flame file as shown below:
The names of each individual fractal can be ‘Rename’d or ‘Delete’d by right-clicking on the relevant one
If you fiddle with a fractal and make a mistake you can undo via CTRL+Z (v2.08)
Thats it for now, I will update this page with new features and amendments when I can.
Last Updated: 13th December 2008