I seriously cannot believe it is December already! Where did the year go? Only 30 days left in my project…
I was beginning to get a little frustrated with Apophysis 2, because it was so slow with rendering. The processes would take up only a few megs of memory, even though I have 8 gigs, and I couldn’t figure out how to speed it up any faster than what it was doing, which was s-l-o-o-o-o-o-w-w-w-w-w.
Then I read a post somewhere recommending Apophysis 7X, which was developed to work better with more modern versions of Windows, and better supports larger memory sizes. It is also updated more frequently than the old 2.x. So, I downloaded it and popped it open. Must say, I am impressed. It renders much faster than the older version, and the images are pretty awesome.
I came across an accidental image today, while trying to turn one random render into something else. Interestingly enough, when I tried to “improve” the render, it got “worse”, meaning I didn’t like the results nearly as much as the “lower quality” render. Here’s what I mean:
I’m really not sure why this happened. Guess it just goes to show that there is no “perfect” setting for this software.
Also, the rendering times are much faster for this version. The “low” quality version took just over 5 minutes, while the “high” quality version took around 22 minutes. Images of similar size were taking an hour to an hour and a half in the Apo 2.x I was using before, even after I figured out how to set the renders to use more memory.
I was finally able to get a decent compromise image via PaintShopPro (PSP), which involved duplicating the fractal layer and changing the blend mode to Screen on the top layer:
This version took just over 6 minutes to render, then less than 5 minutes to post-process, simply because it took me a couple of minutes to decide how to make the final image better.
I think I’ll enjoy playing with this newer version of Apophysis. It seems a lot more flexible and way more powerful than the older version. Just need to figure out a bit more about the newer features. Plus, I have to remember to play with the gradients. Like this:
Or this:
I’m loving this creative life!
