Those who travel very slowly may yet make far greater progress, provided they keep always to the straight road, than those who, while they run, forsake it. Rene Descartes, Discourse on the Method
Lo so che parlo perche' parlo ma che non persuadero' nessuno; e questa e' disonesta' - ma la rettorica mi costringe a forza a far cio' - o in altre parole "e' pur necessario che se uno ha addentato una perfida sorba la risputi". C. Michelstaedter, La Persuasione e la Rettorica
Under a darkening sky / The night is falling down on me / And I'm thinking that I should / Head on home / Been gone too long / Leave my roaming M. Knopfler and Emmylou Harris, Beachcombing
Long time away from my main Apophysis Script: I had so few spare time during the last months. Not much will be available too in the next future due to main-job and the joyful approaching birth of my son (next week).
So I’ve forced the ’spin’ to finally put my hands to the 1.3.9 final version.
A lot of small thing was left undone in the beta3 and they’re quite complete now.
I’ve added support for Flam3 2.8 beta7 and the new Variations (auger, cos, cosh, cot, coth, csc, csch, exp, log, sec, sech, sin, sinh, tan, tanh); ‘nframes’ and ‘pixel_aspect’ Flam3 commands are now available in the .bat file and then I dropped the support for the previous 2.8 beta versions due to their small bugs.
The Flam3 ’stagger’ had a small quirk related to Sheep and Edges animations that it’s resolved in this version.
I’ve updated the Padding XForms and the Export/Preview routines. They work far better now. Padding XForms can be used on very large files. Preview is now fully consistent with the exported Flames and it can also be aborted cos it’s executed after the whole exporting).
Global Camera Rotation works properly with both Clockwise and Anticlockwise rotations
Take a look at the complete Changelog; read it below.
Flam3 2.8 Beta7 release mainly adds full interpolation for ‘Highlight power’ and it corrects the flam3-genome ’split’ (broken during the previous betas).
Render Flam3 Padding XForms is a unique feature that I introduced in the script version 1.3.7 (04 November 2008). It was mainly coded to adjust some quirks related to the Morph animation type so the user can have a better control of the whole morphing process but it can also affect Edge and Sheep ones.
Why I’m talking about it?
I’ve had no feedback about it (I’m not blaming anyone) but the script has some potential that lays underneath the surface and the current preliminary documentation doesn’t help at all (I’ll work on it as soon as possible too).
So I was just guessing: “Had someone tried it at all?”. Who knows…
Four simple video examples can maybe show how Padding XForms changes the animation motion.
I just don’t believe how much fast the time flows; the last release is approaching to a month ago. I’ve got so few spare time to work on the script: the new code was added during the weeks but I was out of testing possibilities due to some main-job urgencies.
Well, there’s not much hurry: no users response at all! … I’m not complaining, it’s the world we live in …
Beta3 is a quite good step forward to me. I’m quite near to the end of the 1.3.x planned-features-table so maybe I’d be better stay silent and go on with the coding. Who knows! :O
The new 1.4.x will have plenty of new small commodities and it’ll be mainly focused on usability. You know I’m still on the case.
Flam3 installation is now checked using Apophysis “Export renderer” path: we’ll no see the annoying request anymore, plus it can be easily changed just in case you need to use some different Flam3 versions.
Flam3 2.8 Bet4 stagger env var is now fully supported, plus I added the ‘oscope’ to ‘oscilloscope’ conversion and dropped redundant and useless (to Flam3) Flame.Angle tag.
The other small adds can be found in the Changelog.
I’m back to this script again after more than one year.
Why? Well, some update needs surfaced out of genetic-design mailing list during the last days.
First of all I’ve had the confirmation that the ‘twintrian’ Variation is currently banned; when a Flame containing this Variation is uploaded then the designer will have a surprise: the result it’ll be different cos the server silently erase it.
I’ve secondly discovered that ES (ElectricSheep) server limits to 5 the number of Variations per Transforms (XForm); I was completely unaware of it or I forgot the limitation when I firstly coded the script (I really don’t remember).
Stagger env var is another Flam3 2.8 new feature.
It permits to control how the Transforms are interpolated during the animation; every designer can use this feature to customize the animation motions.
It applies to all animation modes created by Flam3: Sheep (Loop), Edge and Morph ones.
Erik Reckase explains it this way: “Setting stagger to 0 means the same as current behaviour. stagger=1 means that each xform will interpolate one at a time instead of simultaneously. stagger=0.5 means that the second xform will start halfway through the interpolation of the first xform, and so on.” and also “Affects simultaneity of xform interpolation during genome interpolation. Represents how ’separate’ the xforms are interpolated. Set to 1 for each xform to be interpolated individually, fractions control interpolation overlap.”
Setting stagger to 0 is like not having it at all. The Transforms are in both cases interpolated in the old Flam3 2.7.xx way.
I’ve prepared 4 small clips that visually explain the ’stagger’ env var usage.
The first two clips represent what previously said about stagger=0 and no stagger usage: the result is the same!
Flam3 2.8 Beta4 release corrects the ‘animate’ mode bug; see here: Flam3 2.8 Beta3
Previous betas was unable to create Morph animations correctly; the correct ‘animate’ mode implementation is back and this release can create them too.
The new Flam3 2.8 Beta3 release is actually available for testing.
Thanks a lot to Erik Reckase for the new releases!
Warning: there’s a bug related to flam3-genome; it cannot properly execute when used with ‘animate’ mode (animate env var active). Already communicated to Erik: a fix will be available in a few days.
Well, this is the public beta release.
Sorry for the setback about beta1 but I found a couple of quirks that could potentially lead users to some headaches.
The Chaos tag was improperly including the FinalXForm value (always equal to 1); this value is totally redundant and unneeded.
Global Camera Rotation feature (introduced in 1.3.8.3 release) was spinning the Camera in the wrong direction (the opposite one) cos Apophysis uses an inverted Rotation value.
This version supports most of the new Flam3 2.8 Beta2 new features.
I’m finally approaching the last 1.3.x release (better later than nothing).
I’m actually calling it “beta1″ cos I didn’t have much time to deep test it but I’m quite sure that it should not have strange behaviors or quirks in it.
I’ve added complete Flam3 2.8 beta support: new Variations, new env var and new Flame tags.
The Export routine is finally forced to a single code loop and I’ve corrected some small/rare and quite old quirks.
There’s a lot to list but I think it’s faster and better to read below (Changelog) for all the new stuff.
This is an “internal” release.
Download RenderFlam3 1.3.8.6 here (Right Click / Save As): RenderFlam3.zip
I found a misspelling into the .bat file writing routine cos “nthread” parameter should be “nthreads”. Modifying the misspelled “nthread” value has no effects at all on the number of Threads used by Flam3.
Released under GPL License – http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
Credits or donations are not mandatory but very appreciated especially when using “RenderFlam3″ in commercial production.
RenderFlam3 main purpose is rendering a sequence of Flames using Flam3 to create animations.
It’s an Apophysis script which cycles through the flames in the Title Window,
sets their time field,
sets their advanced animation tags,
saves them all off to a single flame file,
and then creates a bat file (to the same output path).
Executing the bat file will launch flam3-animate and render the animation’s frames; Flam3 will interpolate all the flames. RenderFlam3 can create Morph, Sheep or Edge animations.
