Apophysis Tutorial

Apophysis is a freestanding and freeware flame fractal generator created by Mark Townsend. This tutorial is not about the nitty gritty ins and outs of Apophysis. But rather a basic tutorial for the beginner to get a handle on this programme.

Apophysis version 2.02 is the latest official version of Apophysis.

When using Apophysis it may be a good idea to sign up for the mailing list. You can ask any questions or just learn from other peoples' questions and answers. Also any announcements about the programme are made here. Just be aware that this list can get very busy, resulting in many emails to your inbox.

Generally speaking these random flames are not usually very exciting so we have to resort to other tools within Apophysis to get that wonderful shape and form we are looking for.

You can drag the edges of the Apophysis window to make the preview larger, however it will take the flame longer to render as more memory is being used. I usually keep the preview to the smallest possible size.

Tip
If the flame in the main viewing pane is quite "grainy" click on the options button and scroll down to "options" and click. Under the "Display" tab go to "Quality" (previously called "Sample Density".) If the number is too low eg. 5 this will result in quite a grainy image. I usually work with my Quality at 35 or a little higher. This gives a reasonable view of a flame. Just bare in mind, the higher the Quality the better the preview but a much longer rendering time.

Clicking the center image will regenerate the surrounding flame previews using the same mathematics as the center flame.

Clicking any of the other eight will move the selected flame into the center, and rerender the surrounding flames using the new center flame as the base. The new center flame is then rendered back in the main preview pane.

Experiment with the "Trend" dropdown menu to see how the various variations affect your flame.

Personally, I like to keep the mutation window always open next to the Apophysis window.

Experiment with some of the other scripts. Try "Spiral Batch". This will change the random batch in the Apophysis window. Explore through your new spiral batch. Watch the mutation window while you are doing this.

By now you should be getting an indication of the infinite possibilities that are available to create a flame fractal and the addictive qualities of this wonderful programme.

Tip
To specify the number of random batches that are generated click on the options button and scroll down to "options" and click. Under the "General" tab go to "Batch size" and enter the number you want.