How to create your own "Vapors" animation:

Download and Install Apophysis

Apophysis is a free fractal flame editor program. It is easy to download and easy to use.

• Download Apophysis from www.sourceforge.net. We used the standard windows version.
• Follow the directions to install the package and give it a try.
• You have to be careful with this program. It is very addictive and hours can go by just playing with all of the randomly generated flames.
• try out the script button to see how a flame can be animated. This is the basis of the animation below.

Download the files needed to create the images.

Click on "Download" below to download files for this step:

• Flame parameters that define the image.
• Script that defines how the flame animation images are created.
• Readme file

Render the images

The readme file included with each of the downloads provides more details than the basic steps below.

• Create a directory to contain the animation files.
• Start Apophysis and load the flame from the download.
• Load the script contained in the download below
• Start the script.
• Wait for the the render to complete. In some cases this can be several hours to several days. You can get an idea of how long the rendering will take after 10 or 20 images are created and then extrapolating the total render time.

Now create the AVI file.

After all of the individual images have been created it is time to combine the images into an AVI

• If you have a program that takes a series of BMP images and converts them to an AVI now is the time to use it.
• VirtualDub is the program we use to create the AVIs. The program takes the images created by PovRay and builds an AVI. To get a copy of VirtualDub go to www.sourceforge.org and search on VirtualDub. It has been downloaded over 42 million times and is a mature tested program.
• You may need to experiment with various codecs and compression settings to arrive at an AVI that can play smoothly on your PC.

Build the screen saver.

This is an optional step but playing your animation as a screen saver is a great way of showing it off.

• If you have a program that builds screen savers then use this program to create a screen saver from the AVI generated in the above step. Follow the directions included with your program that describe how to build and install the screen saver.
• There are a number of screen saver builders available on the net. You might try Daves AV Screensaver from www.sourceforge.org. We have not tried this program but since it is free it may be worth a try. Several shareware screen savers are available for reasonable fees.

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