Softology - Visions of Chaos Tutorial

Visions of Chaos movie tutorial
This tutorial will introduce you to creating movies from Visions of Chaos.

Creating movie key frames
A movie is created by setting up a series of fractal locations that the movie will smoothly zoom through. Here is how you would create a movie of a zoom into a Mandelbrot Set fractal. 1. Select the Mandelbrot mode. Mode->Fractals->Mandelbrot. 2. Change the image size to 480x360. Options->Preset Image Sizes->480x360. 480x360 is a good size for a quick test. 3. Load the sinpal14 color palette. See the color palette tutorial if you are not familiar with color palettes in Visions of Chaos. 4. Click the Reset button and then Generate to show the default zoomed out location of the Mandelbrot Set fractal. 5. This will be the starting point of the movie. Movies key frames are stored within script files. Select Movies->Scripts->Add current point to 2D script. 6. Single-click the area of the fractal shown here. The zoom box will appear and be automatically sized. 7. Click the + area within the zoom box (or click the Zoom In button on the toolbar) to zoom into the selected area. 8. This location will be the next key frame for the movie. Select Movies->Scripts->Add current point to 2D script. Accept the default of 30 frames. This means that between the initial point and this point the movie will have 30 frames. 9. Add another 4 key frames to the script using the zoom areas shown in the following images. 10. After the final zoom, the image should look similar to the following.

Creating movie key frames

A movie is created by setting up a series of fractal locations that the movie will smoothly zoom through. Here is how you would create a movie of a zoom into a Mandelbrot Set fractal.

1. Select the Mandelbrot mode. Mode->Fractals->Mandelbrot.

2. Change the image size to 480x360. Options->Preset Image Sizes->480x360. 480x360 is a good size for a quick test.

3. Load the sinpal14 color palette. See the color palette tutorial if you are not familiar with color palettes in Visions of Chaos.

4. Click the Reset button and then Generate to show the default zoomed out location of the Mandelbrot Set fractal.

5. This will be the starting point of the movie. Movies key frames are stored within script files. Select Movies->Scripts->Add current point to 2D script.

6. Single-click the area of the fractal shown here. The zoom box will appear and be automatically sized.

7. Click the + area within the zoom box (or click the Zoom In button on the toolbar) to zoom into the selected area.

8. This location will be the next key frame for the movie. Select Movies->Scripts->Add current point to 2D script. Accept the default of 30 frames. This means that between the initial point and this point the movie will have 30 frames.

9. Add another 4 key frames to the script using the zoom areas shown in the following images.

10. After the final zoom, the image should look similar to the following.

Script manager
Movie keyframes that have been added to scripts can be seen using the Script Manager. Open the script manager by selecting Movies->Scripts->Script manager. The script manager shows the total number of frames and a tree view list of all the settings that are needed to recreate the fractal zoom. Expand "Point 3" to see the settings. Depending on the mode used to create the script, there may be more settings for each point. You really don't need to worry about the various numbers and settings here. Visions of Chaos takes care of all that for you. There are also Load and Save buttons to load and save scripts. Visions of Chaos includes a number of sample scripts. At this stage, do not load any other script and keep the existing script as is.

Script manager

Movie keyframes that have been added to scripts can be seen using the Script Manager.

Open the script manager by selecting Movies->Scripts->Script manager.

The script manager shows the total number of frames and a tree view list of all the settings that are needed to recreate the fractal zoom. Expand "Point 3" to see the settings.

Depending on the mode used to create the script, there may be more settings for each point. You really don't need to worry about the various numbers and settings here. Visions of Chaos takes care of all that for you.

There are also Load and Save buttons to load and save scripts. Visions of Chaos includes a number of sample scripts. At this stage, do not load any other script and keep the existing script as is.

Creating movie frame files
Once you have a script created the next step is generating all the individual frames that make up the completed movie. Click the Create Frames button on the Script Manager dialog. This brings up the Frame Generation Options dialog. Click the OK button. Visions of Chaos will start rendering the individual frames. While the frames are rendering you will see the Frame Statistics window in the top left of the screen that shows estimated times for how long the frames will take to render. Wait until all the frames have been generated.

Creating movie frame files

Once you have a script created the next step is generating all the individual frames that make up the completed movie.

Click the Create Frames button on the Script Manager dialog. This brings up the Frame Generation Options dialog.

Click the OK button. Visions of Chaos will start rendering the individual frames. While the frames are rendering you will see the Frame Statistics window in the top left of the screen that shows estimated times for how long the frames will take to render.

Wait until all the frames have been generated.

Combining frames into a movie file
When the individual frame files have all been rendered, the Movie Build Settings dialog appears. Click OK. The individual frame files will be combined into a movie file and the movie will be shown in your default media player application.

Creating movies without scripts
Many of the modes in Visions of Chaos can create movies without the need of a script file. These modes have a "Create frames" checkbox on their settings dialogs. When checked each update of the mode will be saved as a frame. Once the mode is stopped the frames can then be combined into a movie.