Explore the presets
ArtMatic comes with a large number of presets. We encourage you to explore them. Most of these presets have stored locations (parameter sets). When opening the presets, it is a good idea to press the Animate Parameter Sets button (the one on the left) and watch what happens.

Anti-aliasing
You may notice that when you animate a system (using random path animation, for instance), or exercise any of the real-time controls (such as the parameter sliders), that the image becomes 'blocky' or 'grainy' until you release the mouse button. This is expected behavior. When the system undergoes real-time control, its display is not smoothed (anti-aliased) as this operation is processor intensive and not possible in real-time. When the system comes to rest, the image is smoothed.

Animation
ArtMatic is capable of rendering very high quality anti-aliased animation. It is worth keeping in mind that the real-time animation which ArtMatic displays is less detailed and smooth than the animation which is actually exported when using the QuickTime export feature. When the animation is exported, each frame is anti-aliased as it is rendered.

The ArtMatic Challenge: Generate a few short movies and see if you can stop.

Animation Tips
In order to maintain high fidelity and resolution, movies exported from ArtMatic are not compressed. Each frame of the movie is a complete ArtMatic image. In the 1.1 release, QuickTime compression has been added as an export option. ArtMatic movies can take up quite a bit of disk space. (A one minute animation without sound track and with a resolution of 256 X 256 uses almost 60 megabytes of hard disk space.) Depending on the settings with which the movie was saved, it may not play back smoothly on some machines unless you experiment with the QuickTime export settings.


Here are a few helpful hints for creating animation:

• keep frame rates low - 12 frames per second (fps) is often all you need to create smooth animation.
• choose a reasonable format - unless you will be exporting the animation to a dedicated video playback device (such as a DVD player or DV camcorder) you may find that large format animations do not play back smoothly on even the fastest machines. Sizes between 128 x 128 and 256 x 256 seem to work best. 128 by 128 is often best choice, especially if the movie has a sound track.
• experiment with the delta time - when you find a system you'd like to animate, experiment with the Animation Delta Time found in the Preferences window. Large values create a smooth journey that goes less far while small values will result in more radical journeys. The preview added in ArtMatic 1.1 gives you a good idea of the real speed at which the system evolves.

Mouse Clicks
If it seems like ArtMatic is missing mouse clicks when you are performing real-time animation or sound generation, be patient. You should keep the mouse button held down until ArtMatic responds.

Virtual Memory
ArtMatic sound ouput may requires that virtual memory be turned off. If you experience erratic behavior, open the Memory control panel and make sure that virtual memory is turned off. It should be noted that some OS upgrades turn this feature on automatically without informing the user.