Enzymind Labs

Creating 3D Fractal Flames with Apophysis and Space Software.

This is a tutorial which describes how to make three dimensionally rendered fractal flames with Apophysis and a secondary program called Space Software. Some examples of the images generated with this method can be seen here. There is a PDF version of this tutorial attached at the bottom of this page.

Work Flow Overview:

1. Generate a fractal flame using Apophysis.

2. Run the Apophysis “Animation Render” script.

3. Load the series of images generated from the Animation Render script as a volume stack into Space software.

4. Render the 3d fractal flame image in Space Software by pressing the 'r' key.

As you can see its extremely easy and the images that are generated can be quite striking.

Detailed Work Flow:

What you will need

Apophysis.

1st, download the full Apophysis package here since it contains the necessary scripts. The current standard 2.02 version of Apophysis included in the basic distribution package will work as described in this tutorial. The latest version of the Apophysis executable which has some nice new features can be downloaded here.

Space. Download the latest version here .

The 3D fractal flame models described in this tutorial are made by importing the series of frames that result from running an Apophysis animation script into a volume rendering program called Space.

After installing both of these programs,

[In Apophysis]

1. Run Apophysis and generate a fractal flame that you like. For the purpose of making a nice discrete 3D model, I tend to select fractal flames that are relatively clean without lots of structures that go off frame. To test for this, while in Apophysis I run the fractal flame through the 'Animate' script a few times to make sure that as the fractal is animated it stays within the bounds of the frame. Script -> Open -> Animate. Press the green arrow to run the script. (right click screen captures to see full size).

   I may make some positioning adjustments using the magnifying glass buttons, hand tool or play with rotating the triangles and transforms a bit until the flame stays with in the bounds of a frame during the animation. Ideally you want the fractal flame to maximally fill the frame. This is by no means necessary, just something that I like to do. Save the fractal flame parameters at this time.

2. After you are happy with the fractal flame you have chosen, open the 'Animation Render' script and then open the script with the edit function. There are a number of parameters that can be tinkered with in the script, but for now just change the output directory to a directory on your computer. You will need to first create a subdirectory on your computer for the image series that will be output or else the script will likely show errors. The default output format is .bmp. However, since there are a lot of files and the directory sizes can get kind of big, I usually change this to '.jpg' in the script at the end of the directory selection line. If I have made any changes to the original scripts I usually like to save the changed script with a different name in case 'things go south'.

3. Run the 'Animation Render' script and wait for the 100 images to be generated in the directory you selected. Once the batch render is complete, I like to open the images and quickly scan through them. They should transition fluidly and look like what you saw when you ran the 'Animate' script in Apophysis, but just at higher resolution.

[In Space Software]

4. Now run Space Software by double clicking the executable. Go to File -> 'Open Serial Images' and navigate to the directory with the 100 Apophysis images you just created. Select All. Click 'Open'. The 100 images are now loaded as a 'stack' volume in Space. The way Space displays volumes by default is to show one slice through the volume. Play with rotating the axis of the volume by holding the left button and mousing or repositioning the cut-plane by right button mousing.

5. Render the stack by pressing the 'r' key. That's pretty much it. To render the full volume, be sure to move the purple-line cut plane all the way out of the way by right mousing.

6. Experiment with rotating the volume and repositioning the cut plane by left and right clicking and mousing. Each time you reposition the model it will take a few seconds to redraw.

7. To export a picture of the current position of the 3D fractal flame, go to File -> 'Save this slice as image'.

8. To create a stereographic view of the 3D fractal flame, open the render parameters by pressing ctrl-r and select one of the stereo views -I usually find crossed view most comfortable.
   
   

As you can see this is extremely easy and the amount of parameter tweaking in the process is endless. One can spend a lot of time in Apophysis perfecting the fractal flame which will be used for rendering in Space. I wanted to keep this tutorial relatively simple so that people could get the basic idea down and start experimenting like all good Apophysists do.

An example of crossed view stereo rendering the same fractal flame with ray tracing turned off:

The quality of the images is quite good and they have some unique characteristics. They can be even better if you increase the resolution of the images exported from Apophysis. These were exported at 320x240x100. I have made them at 1920x1080x100 and the structures get really detailed, but you need some serious computer horsepower to keep the programs from choking.

LOTS of things to play with in space.

Some of the interesting things that can be done on these volume renders in Space are:

-Zoom the image using the scroll wheel or magnifying glass buttons.

-Rotate the image using left button mousing.

-Make cut-sections into the volume by right button mousing.

-Draw on the model.

-Make overlays in a similar manner to photoshop. Superimpose multiple 3D fractal flames...

-Adjust the lighting intensity and angle.

-Make 2D, 3D and 3D-stereo animations which can be exported as .AVI movies!

I think Space is a great tool, its free and I have had a lot fun extending the functionality of Apophysis with it. Please feel free to post "ApophySpace" images here on Enzymind in the galleries, blogs or other areas. I would love to see them. No registration needed to post images as image nodes or in comments.

Mark Dow is the creator of space software. Mark can be contacted at dow@uoregon.edu.

Questions regarding this tutorial can be posted here on the Enzymind website as comments, to the Apophysis mailing list (apophysis@lists.fractalus.com) if the question might be relevant to other apophysists, or directly to my email: psr5000@gmail.com.

I may extend this tutorial in the future to explore additional features of Apophysis and Space Software. Individuals who are interested in sharing and collaborating on this type work (fractals, math art etc) are encouraged to register and participate in developing projects here on Enzymind. -Peter