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The Art of the Dragon
A tutorial on how to create Dragon Eggs within Apophysis
copyright Darvin Atkeson 2005
     
  4. Continue to the Gradient tab and set the values as shown in Figure 4.  
 
 


figure 4.

 
 

I believe the only real change here is that I have the maximum number of nodes set to 12. The setting seems to give me a better variety of palettes when I use the random palette generator in Apophysis.

Accept and close the Options panel.

 
 
  5. Load the script files in to your Favorites. This is optional but if you plan to make a large number of eggs then it will be a lot easier to access the scripts.  
     

figure 5.
  To add the scripts, make sure you downloaded and extracted the script files. Click on the Add button and add the !Batch Spiral and !Spiral scripts. Move them to the top as shown if you wish to use Ctrl + F1 and F2 to call up the scripts.  

 

 
  6. Choose Edit > Image Size or press Ctrl + I to set the image aspect ratio. See Figure 6 below.  
 

figure 6.
  
 

Because the Dragon Eggs are perfect spheres, I choose to use a square aspect ratio. NOTE: This is not the render size but the working window. The render size will be set later when you actually render the Dragon Eggs. I use a value of 600 x 600.

IMPORTANT: There is a little catch on this dialog. You need to make sure you press enter after entering each value to force it to resize the working window. Once done, check the box to Maintain aspect ratio.

 
     
 

7. We are now ready to begin making the eggs. From the File menu, choose Random Batch or press Ctrl + B to generate a random bach of discs. This may take a few moments based on the speed of your system. (Note the progress in the lower left. When done, you will see a new flame appear in the window.

NOTE: It won't look nearly as nice as most of the flames you are used to seeing. This is normal. See example below:

  
 
 

figure 7.
 .
     
  8. Now we are going to run the script on all the new batch to generate the Dragon Eggs. If you moved the !Batch Spiral to the top of your list, you can press Ctrl + F1 to bring up the script. Otherwise go to the Script > !Batch Render to start the process. This will bring up the Rotation Angle setting. See Figure 8 below:  
     
 

figure 8.
  
  The default value is 20 degrees. For this example, I recommend a setting of 45. Other interesting values you should try are 0, 33, 75, 90 and 180. 0 degrees is of course no rotation at all. Click OK to go to the Scale setting.  
     
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