Apophysis Tutorial: Understand What You're Doing

Turn annotations on to see instructions. There is no sound. Follow along in Apophysis, because some things are hard to see in the video. 480p is much better.

When I first started working with Apophysis a few years ago, I had no idea what I was doing, even after following a few tutorials, so I learned by trial and error and lots of randomly moving around the 'magic' triangles. I hope that after watching this you'll be able to move beyond that stage more quickly than I did. You may not suddenly know what to do to make an amazing fractal, but when you are editing a fractal you should be able to use the tools at your disposal without changing everything one at a time, hoping for a certain result.

The topics covered:
1. Manipulating shapes
2. Xaos and weight
3. Color
4. The adjust window
...basically, everything that took me a decent amount of time to figure out. Notable topics I do not cover include rendering, saving, and scripting. I also assume that you can figure out how to move, rotate, and scale the triangles, and other basics. There are many other good tutorials on the web for these. However, I go click-by-click through the tutorial.

I don't know the inner workings of Apophysis so my interpretations of what things do may be overly simplistic.

I used Apophysis 2.09 for this tutorial, a free download at sourceforge.net

Thanks to Zueuk for inspiration, thanks to the creators of Apophysis, and above all thanks to God for giving me the ability to make beautiful stuff.

My dA: http://zyndara.deviantart.com/

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Apophysis
• tutorial
• fractal
• flame
• generator
• mutation
• computer
• software
• sourceforge
• transform
• triangle
• understand
• what
• you're
• doing
• cool
• stuff
• happens
• manipulating
• shapes
• weight
• xaos
• adjust
• window
• editor
• color
• gradient
• how
• to
• apophis
• apophys

[Twinfire]

Thanks 3Daybreaker for the tutorial, v helpful.

A Question though: Do you use a plugin of sorts to get the preview effect in the transform window?

Mine dont do that.

[3Daybreaker]

@Twinfire Nope, there should be a button on the top of the editor window that turns the variation preview on and off. Settings for the preview can be changed under the colors tab.

[CriticOfMetal]

I need help. Whatever I do nothing happens. I mean, I'll turn on something and occaisionally I'll get a few colored dots but thats it.

[3Daybreaker]

@CriticOfMetal "turn on something"...a variation?...

...when you're following along with the tutorial? Make sure linear is set to 0 when you turn on another variation.

...when you're trying to make your own fractals? It's a lot of trial and error to see what works and what doesn't. If I don't get anything on my screen, my first reaction is usually to scale down my triangles a bit and see if something appears.

Does that solve the problem?

[masztodon888]

fuck you beacuse of your fractals....:D by the way thanks a lot, now a lot of things make sense about what am i doing: ) and again, congrat for yours...

[abhinav9891]

Amazing Tutorial......It was really helpful!

[allwaysjudee]

@allwaysjudee sorry, typos in the keyboard - I type faster than it prints! The last line is, I finally understand what the weights do, what direction the color comes from, etc.

[allwaysjudee]

Fantastic tutorial! I am one of those who has only dabbled in Apo because I never understood the functions and how they worked. The info on the Chaos and color is especially helpful. I haven't tried it yet, just watched this and will watch again, pausing, etc. I like to understand the why of things, and I finat, what the weights do, what direction the comes from, etc. Brilliant! Thank you so very much for posting this! :)

[CYROHeiMeR]

Yeah when I set pre-blur on the first triangle to 0.3 and linear to 0.5 on the second one i just see a tiny spec. Even after re-scaling the triangles. I don't get why it would be different from yours if those are the same settings. Maybe I'm missing something?

[CaptainBudgie]

Thank you so much! This tutorial is awesome. Was really tired of stumbling around randomly and not understanding. Loved the paper/picture explanation and how you walked through what the program is doing. I didn't have a clue before. Now I have a way to learn more by playing around. I'm going to link to your tutorial in my blog when I post fractal art this weekend so others can learn too. Thanks again!

[petodj]

Muchas Gracias, muy buen aporte

[latebloom3]

Just installed Apophysis 7.14. I have never used a fractal program before. This is one of the most helpful tutorials that I've come across. I now have a better understanding of how some of these features work. Thank you so much!

[marcuelcajon]

Great Tutorial

[mawenchan]

thank you for the tutorial! :) and i watched you in deviantart. Cool works! :D