Skill Level: Beginner to Intermediate

Quick Facts

• Easy Exploration of Vast Territory

• Definitions

• Activate all plugins, get fewer useful results but cover greater territory

• Restricted plugin list – greater number of interesting results

• Choosing your Transform complexity

• Mutation window – randoms in a direction and speed

• Use a Script to create randoms that restrict parameter values to a useful range

Definition

Flame parameters that are generated by random functions are termed “randoms.” Each time you open Apo it automatically renders a new Random batch which you can sort through and save singly or as a batch.

• Method 1 –  Use the Random Batch <Ctrl B> option in the File menu. Remember to set the Batch Size in the Options panel <Ctrl P> under the Random tab

• Method 2 – Use the Mutation panel <F7>

• Method 3 – Use a Script to generate random choices

Recommendations

Upon finding an interesting random, save it to a unique Flame File. Then open that new flame file so that’s the only file visible. Explore using the Transform Editor and try new things. Save under an incremental name change every time something new or more interesting shows up. In Apo 3D, use the Rotate Pitch Script to easily visualize whether there is existing shape or whether changes made generate shape or flatten it and how much. Plan to render relatively small images to begin with. Decide later whether it is worth a large render.

How To

The different methods generally result in different percentages of useful or interesting results. With all the Plugins active, resulting flames will have fewer useful or interesting qualities. There are so many variations in the whole list that combined with open ended random values it can prove too much of a wild card. Be prepared to discard or delete many of these parameters before saving the batch. It can be useful to use the Save All Parameters <Shift+Ctrl+S>  in a storage flame file for later study or retrieval that is only used for random batches.

Better

To get a higher percentage of interesting results, go to Options <Ctrl P> under the Variations tab and choose the Clear All button. Then go through the list and select only a handful of variations. Choose the ones you know are interesting or which tend towards designs you want to work with. Go to the Random tab and make any changes to those settings, especially take note of the box where you enter a Title prefix for the generated randoms and the settings for minimum and maximum Number of transforms.

Random batches are generated with random values. It can easily be observed that some Variations are more sensitive to value changes than others or in certain combination’s with other factors. This can cause many flames to seem uninteresting, ugly and sometimes just appear as a tiny spot or be completely black.

It may be possible to quickly identify what properties in those “uninteresting” flames are causing them to be blank or ugly. Often they can pop into very interesting patterns so don’t assume they are useless without doing some exploring. On the other hand, designing from scratch with a deliberate direction is easy and there are plenty of already visible and interesting randoms on which to spend exploration time.

Mutation Windows

This is a good tool and can be used a number of ways. Start with an interesting flame parameter from either a random or a custom flame.

When the Mutation panel <F7> is opened the current flame will show in the central Preview port and variations are arranged around it in 8 choices. There are controls at the bottom, a slider called Speed, a drop-down menu labeled Trend and a check box.

New values in the variation previews are assigned randomly but by using a smaller Speed factor the increments will be smaller resulting in less change per sample.

The Trend drop down menu offers a choice of variations from a list of those that are presently available to the program, whether selected or not, or an option to use a random choice of variation. By selecting a variation from the list the options displayed in the previews will have incremental changes applied to the current flame based on the chosen variation.

Restrict the range of options via the check box for the Same no. of transforms as your starting flame. If you don’t check that box, there is an control in the Options <Ctrl P>, Random tab called Mutation Transforms where you can pre-determine the minimum and maximum number of transforms that get applied by random processes.

Any time an option window is clicked it moves to the central flame and a new set of changed variations are generated around it. Click the center window and it doesn’t change but the new possibilities around it are updated. When something interesting shows up change to a slower Speed factor. Stop and Save any parameters that you might want to explore later.

Because of all the preview windows this way of exploring can make the program run slower as each change requires so many windows to update. The advantage is the ability to cover a lot of random variables. It can be useful when building from scratch as well as just exploring randomly.

Scripting

Possibly the best way to explore randoms is to create or use a Script. Many Scripts already exist which add transforms to a blank flame then randomly assign variations and values. This makes it possible to include just the variations that are desired and best of all, limit the range of values that are assigned to each one. Scripts can be used to save batches of carefully crafted randoms too.

The Random function in scripting generates values between 0 and 1. The goal is to develop code which calculates a minimum and maximum value, positive or negative, depending on which variation type is being worked with. This method provides greater refinement and control over the results while retaining the advantage of random exploration. Study existing scripts and read tutorials to understand how to script. Later posts will add detail to the scripting idea but to start with some very nice tutorials already exist.

Most authors of scripts intend that they be used as learning tools so download and study many of them. Unpack them if they are compressed and store them in a convenient folder under your Apo installation. Open Apo and click the Script menu to find the Open Script <Ctrl E> option. Navigate to your list of scripts and select a script. Click Edit Script <Ctrl D> and read the text of the script to study what is taking place. Save any changes with a new name.