The Introductions

Note:
The online guide of Julia Uncovered v.2.1 has been condensed in some areas to better fit a computer screen. While all of the information and graphics in the guide remain intact, many steps and chapters are now merged, resulting in new and differnt chapters names.

The process took months to discover and there were many, many missteps before I finally had the "Matrix moment", as I call it. I'm going to describe the journey for several reasons. It's a sort of proof that I really did figure out this completely on my own. Also, everyone who has spent time in Apophysis has their own way of developing techniques and I will give some insight on how I do it. Very few fractal artists are able to open the application and make something amazing, although apparently there are some. In general, we spend many hours – or sometimes weeks and months – working with triangles to develop our own techniques.

I have a confession to make. I hate triangles. Sure, it's fun to mess around with a couple of triangles, but the fewer out there on the Transform Editor the better. Every time a triangle is added, it builds off of the others making it difficult to keep track of each element. I've seen starter flames that have had over eight triangles and I have no idea how people can keep track of what everything does. This is why I spent so much time developing the Two Triangle method described in my other tutorial. Fortunately, while Grand Julians use more than two triangles (generally 4-6), the flame is created in an altogether different method than normal flames.

Surprisingly, this technique is incredibly simple. Mind-bogglingly simple. The good news is that this technique doesn't rely on finding the "perfect flame". Just pick any random flame, clear it out and get started. I regard this an intermediate guide simply because I have already written a tutorial that described the basics of Apophysis and didn't want to include that information again in this manual. Basically, you already need to have working knowledge of the Transform Editor and a few of the other features before beginning. There are several tutorials out that describe the process listed in the Resource section.

Second Introduction:
Times change and so does Apophysis. I thought that I might need to begin a tutorial rewrite when I noticed that Grand Julians created in Apophysis version 2.04b were rotated oddly in both the later Joel Faber and Gygrazok’s (Apophysis Z+) versions. After the release of the 2.05b and 2.05b2 versions and the situation remained, I knew I had to rewrite Julia Uncovered to address the changes. But that’s not the only thing I’ve included in this new (much larger) guide.

Oh no.

In this version I’ve included many extras, including options to create visually appealing centers with different variations other than Blur, two additional Grand Julian techniques, “fixing” Julians created with Apophysis 2.04b and even a mini glossary. There are also many more images – roughly 90 in all – to help the user understand the Julian process better. I was initially hesitant to include so many images, considering that the end result would be a very large tutorial. I generally do not like to offer bulky downloads out of respect to dial-up users, however, I felt that I needed the images to fully outline the Julian creation process.

Hopefully, this improved Julia Uncovered will further users on their Apophysis journey. Good luck!

~Claire