page 3 of 4
The Art of the Dragon
A tutorial on how to create Dragon Eggs within Apophysis
copyright Darvin Atkeson 2005
     
  9. Scale Setting. This value sets the amount of scale of each new transform. See Figure 9 below:  
 
 

figure 9.
 
  For this setting we will stay at the default. This value should always be set to values less than 1. Some other values to try are 0, 0.05, 0.2... Click OK to proceed to the Number of Transforms.  
 
  10. Set the number of Transforms. See Figure 10 below.  
     

figure 10.
 

This is the total number of triangles that will appear in the Editor window. In this version of Apophysis, the maximum number is 12 and that is currently the default. I recommend you play around with this value. Ranges between 4 and 8 seem to work best. If you want Dragon Eggs with a lot of spirals in it, go ahead and leave it set to the maximum value of 12.

Upon clicking OK, the script will process all the Dragon Eggs in this batch. This will take a few moments based on the speed of your system. Watch the progress indicator in the lower left as each Dragon Egg is processed.

 

 

 
 

11. Begin viewing the clutch of Dragon Eggs you have just created. Just click on each Dragon Egg in the left pane of the main Apophysis window and give it a few seconds to generate the preview of the flame. See Figure 11 below.

At this point, you may decide that the Dragon Egg is perfect and needs no more tweaking or enhancing. If this is the case you can proceed to saving the parameters and rendering the Dragon Egg to an image file.

 
     
 

figure 11.
 
     
  12. Tweaking the Dragon Eggs. See Figure 12 below:  
     

figure 12.
 

This is where the real artwork begins. It's not easy to describe how best to tweak a Dragon Egg. Play around with the triangles in the Editor window and see what happens. A few things that will be of use:

Right click on a triangle and choose Flip Horizontal and/or Flip Vertical. This comes in handy if your Dragon Egg has a dark side and needs better distribution of the flame within the egg.

Alt + Mouse Click = Rotate Triangle clockwise.
Ctrl+ Mouse Click = Rotate Triangle counter clockwise.
Shift + Mouse Click = Enlarge Triangle
Ctrl + Shift + Mouse Click = Shrink Triangle.

Additionally thin triangles (those with sharp angles) will make lines in the Dragon Egg while wider triangles will give you a better view of the transform within the Dragon Egg.

Tweaking the triangles too much will result in the Dragon Egg breaking and spilling out of the circle. This is not always a bad thing.

.
     
  13. Mutations. See Figure 13 below:  
     
 

figure 13.
  
  Always be aware of what is happening in the Mutations window. I personally use dual monitors so I nearly always have this window open. This is just an automated way of tweaking the triangles and some mutations will break the circle while others will not. You can also try setting the Trend and Speed to control the type and amount of mutation. If you are getting close to something you like, adjust the Speed to a lower setting.  
     
     
Previous
Next
Page 4.