How Amorpher Works

Page Settings define the working format of the project. They control the canvas size, aspect ratio, and resolution used for building the composition and preparing final output.

These settings are especially important because Amorpher supports high-resolution image export and high-resolution video recording. The page format defines the frame in which the composition is built and the dimensions used when exporting PNG images or recording WebM video.

Page Settings are useful for preparing square compositions, wide layouts, vertical formats, social-media outputs, or custom canvas sizes.

Scene Settings control the overall visual foundation of the composition. This panel includes starter compositions, scene presets, background color, and scene-wide rendering controls.

Unlike object settings, these controls do not affect a selected blob, path, or patch individually. They shape the base atmosphere and visual behavior of the entire composition.

Scene Settings can be used to adjust Noise Scale, Noise Amount, Softness, Glow, Blur Mix, Saturation, Grain, and Vignette, as well as to apply preset scene states or randomize the overall palette.

• Background - The visual base of the scene, including color, atmospheric fields, and image-based backgrounds.
• Blobs - Soft fields of color and light for glowing masses, atmosphere, depth, and broad visual movement.
• Paths - Editable Polyline or Bezier curves with gradients, variable width, power points, pattern-maps, animation, and render styles.
• Gradient Patches - Rail-based mesh-gradient surfaces and line fields built from editable rails.
• Filters - A post-process layer that can rearrange, slice, distort, or restructure the rendered canvas.

Most object layers use two basic editing modes: Select and Edit.

Select Mode is used for working with whole objects. In Select Mode, an object can usually be selected, moved, scaled, rotated, or transformed as a complete unit.

Edit Mode is used for working inside an object. Depending on the object type, Edit Mode may expose path points, Bezier handles, rails, power points, color stops, local width, strength, falloff, or other internal controls.

Select Mode changes the object as a whole. Edit Mode changes the structure inside the object.

Blobs are soft visual fields of color and light. They can be used to create glowing forms, atmospheric masses, spatial depth, soft gradients, and moving light bodies.

A blob can be positioned, scaled, colored, softened, intensified, blended, and animated. Blobs are often the fastest way to build a visual atmosphere in Amorpher.

They are less structural than paths or patches, but they are useful for creating luminous energy, background motion, and soft relationships between objects.

Path Points

Path points define the shape of the curve. Polyline paths are built from straight segments. Bezier paths use handles to create curved motion, arcs, and flowing forms.

Power Points

Power points control the visual behavior along the path. They can affect color, local width, strength, opacity, and asymmetric blur or spread along the curve.

This allows a single path to expand, narrow, soften, sharpen, or shift color at different positions.

Pattern-maps

Pattern-maps apply procedural or custom graphic maps to the rendered path. Built-in modes can include grids, lines, rings, and dots. Custom black-and-white maps can also be uploaded and used as pattern sources.

A pattern-map follows the path's shape and motion, adding internal structure to the rendered form.

Render Styles

Paths can use different render styles to change their visual character. Some styles create smooth continuous forms. Others create segmented, graphic, or more structured results.

Rails

Rails are the main editable curves of a patch. A patch can contain multiple rails. The space between neighboring rails is used to create controlled color transitions, surfaces, or line fields.

Power Points

Each rail can contain power points. Power points shape color, strength, and local behavior along the rail. Together, the rails and their power points define the visual structure of the patch.

Render Modes

Gradient Patches can use different render modes. Smooth mode renders the patch as a continuous gradient surface. Faceted mode gives the surface a more segmented or angular structure. Lines mode renders interpolated curve lines between rails instead of filling the surface.

Falloff

Patch falloff softens the outer boundary of the rendered patch. At zero, the patch stays tightly bounded by its outer rails. Higher values create a softer edge around the patch.

Animation is a general capability of the system. Blobs, paths, and gradient patches can all be animated. Animation in Amorpher is not timeline-based. It runs as a cyclic loop, controlled through object settings and the main playback controls.

When Play is pressed, the animation loop starts running. When Pause is pressed, the scene stops at the current animation phase, but the original object data is still preserved. The settings panel continues to show the base values of the selected object, not necessarily the temporary animated values visible on the canvas at that paused phase.

To return animated objects to their original starting state, use Stop. To make the current animated phase become the object's new editable base state, use Bake.

• Blobs can move, drift, or cycle through motion settings.
• Paths can animate their points, power points, pattern-map behavior, and color cycling.
• Gradient Patches can animate rail points, power points, and color cycling.

Playback can be used as part of the creative process. A scene can be played, paused on an interesting frame, baked if needed, adjusted, and then exported or recorded.

Amorpher can record the animated canvas as a video loop. Recording captures the current visual output of the canvas while the animation is running.

In the public alpha, video recording is limited to 60 seconds.

The recorded video is exported in WebM format. Canvas size, resolution, animation complexity, and browser performance can affect recording quality and speed.

A composition can be exported as a PNG image. Image export uses the current canvas format and resolution. This makes Page Settings important when preparing a final still image.

Exporting an image creates a final output file. It is different from saving the project.

Amorpher projects can be saved as editable project files. A project file stores the scene structure so it can be loaded later and edited again.

This is different from exporting an image or recording a video, which create final output files. Saving project files is recommended when developing a composition over time, testing variations, or preparing reusable presets.