An illustrated explanation of Chaotica`s World Editor.
It also features the Apophysis equivalents (when those exist). The left column corresponds to Chaotica, while the right column is Apo.

This is how the Chaotica Editor looks like:



The World Editor has the following elements:

• toolbar ("New Iterator" and "New Transform" buttons)
• world nodes (the tree view of the iterators)
• node editor (details of each node)
  

If you cannot see one of those, right click one of the visible widgets and click the corresponding option to make it visible again:



To zoom in and out the affine editor, use Alt + right mouse button.
To move, around, Ctrl + right mouse button.

Iterator

Iterator (Chaotica)                                               Transform (Apo)


To add a new iterator, use the "New Iterator" button on top of the editor.



To remove an existing iterator, click on it in the tree view and press Delete.

Transform

Transform (Chaotica)                                            Variation (Apo)


To add a new transform, click on the transforms node and then use the "New Transform" button on top of the editor.



To remove an existing transform, click on it and and press Delete.

Pre and Post transforms

Pre_ and Post_transforms (Chaotica)                 Pre_ and Post_ Variations (Apo)


To add a pre or post transform, click on the corresponding node (above, the post_transforms node is highlighted), and add a new transform.
In Chaotica, you can use any transform as pre or post transform. You do not need to install or even create additional plugins.

By default, the pre and post transform nodes are not visible in Chaotica. To show them, click on the flam3_transform node (highlighted on the picture below) and then use the buttons in Node editor. For example, to make post_transforms node visible, click on the "Show post transforms" button.

Variables

Variable (Chaotica)                                               Variable (Apo)


To view or change the variables of a transform, just click on the transform node. In Chaotica, you can change transform type and edit its variables in the same place.

Also, you can click and drag on the uppy downy button on the right side of each field to change the values:

Weights

Weights (Chaotica)                                               Weight/Xaos (Apo)


To change the base weight (weight in Apo) of an iterator, click on the Weights node.

Weights node also contains the weights to all iterators (xaos in Apo).

Affine transforms

Affine Transforms (Chaotica)                             Triangles/Transforms (Apo)

How to move/rotate/scale affine transforms

To move an affine transform, click on the circle (where both axes meet) and drag.


To rotate, click on the middle of one of the axes and drag.


To scale, click on one of the ^ angles around the affine and drag.


To skew, click on the arrow and drag.


In case you want to move your affines a fixed amount, or a multiple of some fixed amount, you can use the "Snap to grid" tool.



Check "Snap to grid". Set either grid steps or grid spacing to the desired value. Then just move / skew your affines.
Grid spacing: the space between gridlines. If you want to move your affine by 0.3333333333 (or 1/3) at once, set it to 0.3333333333.
Grid steps: is the inverse of grid spacing. In the situation above, to move your affine by 1/3, its easier to set grid steps to 3 instead of setting the spacing to 0.3333333333.

Affine Transforms: numeric input

Affine Transforms (Chaotica)                             Triangles/Transforms (Apo)


Click on the affine2 node to input numeric values, such as axes angles and length, and the affine transform offset.

Post affine Transforms

Post Affine Transforms (Chaotica)                      Post Transforms (Apo)


Post affines are displayed in the editor in a way similar to affine transforms (but with dotted lines for axes).
They can be edited in the same way as the affine transforms.

To add a post affine transform, click on flam3 transform node and then on the "Add post affine" button.