animation

in this mini tutorial i'm going to create the simplest type of animation possible in apo using it's inbuilt script 'animation render.asc', it will render the same type of animation as you can view with the 'animate.asc' preview script.
you will need, apart from apophysis, also a graphics package such as the gimp, to put the rendered frames together.
you also will need to create a folder on your hardrive called 'renders', this will be where the rendering script will put the completed renders.

then you need to find or create a a flame that animates well.
for this example i chose to run the 'spiral batch. asc' script that also comes with apo and after a few tweaks came up with this flame which looks fairly okay in the animate preview.
[as a side note, i've made a minor change to the preview animation script on my machine. select the script and then open the edit function and change the last line to read 'UpdateFlame :=False;' (without the apostrophes)]a mini script howto is here

the flame file for this animation is here

you can either downlaod the file to your harddrive or just highlight the whole text, select copy and then, in apo, under the edit menu 'paste' to load the flame.

once you've found a flame you'd like to animate load the 'animationrender.asc' script and open it to edit as described here
when you've set that all up run the script by hitting the green arrow, and go and get a cup of coffee or three depending on the settings you've chosen for the renders.
one note, if you're planning to make the animation into a gif you can (within reason of course) chose any combination of dimensions for the render, ie, say 250x250, but if you're planning to make it into and mpeg using the berkely mpeg encoder then the dimensions have to be in multiples of 16 (ie, 320x240,640x480 etc)and with a file extension of jpeg (not jpg). it makes sense to check your encoder and adapt the script to reflect it's prerequsites.
for this tutorial i'm going to make the renders into an animated gif, but it'll be a large filesize and it's generally not advisable to make huge animated gifs.

when the frames have completed rendering launch the gimp and locate and open the first of the frames, then under 'file' select 'open as layer', go to the bottom of the stack, click on the second frame and then holding the shift key down, scroll to the bottom and click on that so that all the frames inbetween are highlighted, click open and all the frames will load.

you can test your animation now by right clicking on the image, then filters/animation/playback

then go to 'filters/animation' and select 'optimise for gif', this will create a new optimised image. save you original layered image with the .xcf (filename.xcf) extension and for the optimised image choose the extension .gif (filename.gif), when you hit the save button an export file window will open, make sure you have the option 'save as animation' selected and then click on export.

which will open another window, select loop forever or deselect if you just want it to to run once and click okay.

and to view the finished animation click on the image link

in this mini tutorial i'm going to create the simplest type of animation possible in apo using it's inbuilt script 'animation render.asc', it will render the same type of animation as you can view with the 'animate.asc' preview script. you will need, apart from apophysis, also a graphics package such as the gimp, to put the rendered frames together. you also will need to create a folder on your hardrive called 'renders', this will be where the rendering script will put the completed renders.
then you need to find or create a a flame that animates well. for this example i chose to run the 'spiral batch. asc' script that also comes with apo and after a few tweaks came up with this flame which looks fairly okay in the animate preview. [as a side note, i've made a minor change to the preview animation script on my machine. select the script and then open the edit function and change the last line to read 'UpdateFlame :=False;' (without the apostrophes)]a mini script howto is here	the flame file for this animation is here you can either downlaod the file to your harddrive or just highlight the whole text, select copy and then, in apo, under the edit menu 'paste' to load the flame.
once you've found a flame you'd like to animate load the 'animationrender.asc' script and open it to edit as described here when you've set that all up run the script by hitting the green arrow, and go and get a cup of coffee or three depending on the settings you've chosen for the renders. one note, if you're planning to make the animation into a gif you can (within reason of course) chose any combination of dimensions for the render, ie, say 250x250, but if you're planning to make it into and mpeg using the berkely mpeg encoder then the dimensions have to be in multiples of 16 (ie, 320x240,640x480 etc)and with a file extension of jpeg (not jpg). it makes sense to check your encoder and adapt the script to reflect it's prerequsites. for this tutorial i'm going to make the renders into an animated gif, but it'll be a large filesize and it's generally not advisable to make huge animated gifs.
when the frames have completed rendering launch the gimp and locate and open the first of the frames, then under 'file' select 'open as layer', go to the bottom of the stack, click on the second frame and then holding the shift key down, scroll to the bottom and click on that so that all the frames inbetween are highlighted, click open and all the frames will load.
you can test your animation now by right clicking on the image, then filters/animation/playback
then go to 'filters/animation' and select 'optimise for gif', this will create a new optimised image. save you original layered image with the .xcf (filename.xcf) extension and for the optimised image choose the extension .gif (filename.gif), when you hit the save button an export file window will open, make sure you have the option 'save as animation' selected and then click on export.
which will open another window, select loop forever or deselect if you just want it to to run once and click okay.
and to view the finished animation click on the image link