well i've been playing around with the sphere for ages and can't seem to get the boundary/circle correct and wondering if anyone can improve on it, to make the edges match better?

i ccan't work out this posting stuff, first of all it won't let me cut and pste the par files into the message and then it posts the message twice. if anyone would like the sphere par files i can mail it to them i suppose, and i mean this picture; http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=955311&Start=1&Artist=sammi&ByArtist=Yes

It would probably be easier to post-work it in PSP or PS than to do it in Apophysis. I could show you an example if you don't mind me posting a re-work of your image? Matt.

no, not at all, i was just trying to avoid pw, i'm a bit of a purist, which is silly i know, but yes, it would be great to see what others could do with it. i'm working on something similar at the minute, bubbles, will upload an image in a bit (just got back from the pub and am cooking dinner). i just don't understand why i couldn't paste the formula in here. nevermind.

okay, the bubbles are here; http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=956395&Start=1&Sectionid=30&filter_genre_id=0&WhatsNew=Yes the problem is that of clarity, you try to get the bubbles clearer but then lose some realistic effects. actually i was thing of doing this for the comnpetition but bubbles or spheres are a bit contradictory to the physics of sound, unless, of course, we rewrite physics.

Here's what I did with it. It took about 20 minutes in Photoshop with a mouse (a graphics tablet would be easier and quicker). Used the spherize filter to enhance the sphere and then just used the eraser, blur tool, clone stamp and smudge tool to clean up around the outside of the sphere. Also added a drop shadow to the ring that comes across the front of the sphere just to give a bit more depth to it. The lower left section of the sphere could use a bit more work but it's good enough for this example. Matt.

yes, unfortunatly my wacom has paked up and refuses to work :( and it's not so easy to blend and smudge with the mouse. certainly an improvement but the drop shadow needs to be more curved and smudged, the right hand side ought to be lighter in colour ?. i don't think gimp has a 'spherise' filter, what does that filter actually do in photoshop ? it seems you have also added a what looks like what is called the glass effect filter in gimp ? i like the fact that it is a proper sphere now. obvioiulsy i'm a bit of a dork because i would like it to be rendered 'perfectly' in apo. i have used pov-ray in the past but to be honest have forgotten how to make a glass sphere in pov-ray despite someone being so kind to give me the parameters for such, which i have lost :(

Yea, the drop shadow needs work and I didn't mess with any of the colours or lighting. The spherize filter just lets you make a circular selection on an image and then it distorts it to look spherical. It can cause pixelating in certain images so you need to be careful when using it. The glass effect was already on the image, it just seems to have been enhanced when I used spherize. It might also be down to a bit of pixelating too. Rendering a sphere in Apophysis would be pretty hard to do I think. You can render circles but i've never managed to get a sphere. Maybe someone else has? Matt.