Chaotica: Crystalize Xforms
Introduction
This is a tutorial on installing the custom transforms created by Crystalize
Credits
This is a collaboration between myself and Crystalize but a huge thanks to the fractal community is also in order.
If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants. - Isaac Newton
Installation
Installation can be accomplished using git, or using a flat file copy. I’ll cover each method here so you can make a decision on which method you prefer.
User transforms
User transforms are transforms written in the winter xml format and stored in the user_transforms folder. This folder is located at
%appdata%\Chaotica\user_transforms
NOTE: the %appdata% environment variable points to C:\Users\<username>\Appdata\Roaming</username>
If this folder doesn’t exist, simply create it.
the linux file path is ~/.glare_technologies/Chaotica/user_transforms
And...
the macos file path is /Users/<username>/Library/Containers/com.glaretechnologies.chaotica/Data/Library/Application Support/Chaotica/user_transforms
This folder will accept subdirectories and you can create them at will to organize your files. Please keep in mind that organizing files in this way will have no impact on how the software lists them. They are listed by name in a case sensitive manner regardless of how their folders are structured.
Flat File Copy
The first method involves copying the files directly. The files are located on the git repo.
Simply find the xml file you want and copy it to the user_transforms folder. As I said before, you can create subfolders if you like.
Git Clone
Since this is stored on a git repo, you can clone the repo and copy all the files to your directory. If you have git installed, it’s a simple command. I highly suggest this method as it allows for a single command to update the pack. This pack is under active development at the time of writing of this post, which means it gets frequent updates.
To start off with, I know there are GUI based methods for doing this, but I much prefer the command line. Feel free to use a GUI if that’s your thing. This tutorial will cover the command line version.
First, open your command line of choice and navigate to the folder. On windows it’s
cd %appdata%\chaotica
Check to see if the user_transforms folder exists and if not create it. You can simply attempt to make the directory and it will error out if it exists. If not, it will create the directory.
mkdir user_transforms
Then we change to that directory and clone the github repo
cd user_transforms
git clone https://github.com/TheCrystalize/XForms.git
That will copy all the files into their correct locations.
Winter Library
With the most recent update, the winter library doesn’t need to be modified to add functions. You only need this for the development branch.
Update Process
The file winter_std_lib_updates.txt is included. The file will be located at
%appdata%\Chaotica\user_transforms\crystalize_xforms\winter_std_lib_updates.txt
First pull up this text file and open it up.
Next go to the folder
C:\Program Files\Chaotica\data
Open the winter_stdblib.txt file and copy the entirety of the code from the updates into a new line at the bottom of this file. Don’t replace anything. Just add it to the end and save the file.
Git update
If you used git to install this, you can use it to update the pack. To run an update simply open your command prompt and use the following commands
cd %appdata%\Chaotica\user_transforms\crystalize_xforms
git pull