Title: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: Pauldelbrot on January 14, 2012, 08:09:46 AM Seems to me this forum (and the linked gallery) used to get a lot more traffic. Recently it's lucky to get two posts in one day...
Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: DarkBeam on January 14, 2012, 10:39:43 AM ... and less new ideas, and new formulas are shared. Too bad! :sad1:
Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: David Makin on January 14, 2012, 11:47:29 AM Time of year ;)
Also the last 2 years or so have been inordinately active !! In terms of fractal software one of the reasons for a slow-down is that few new programs are appearing because the ones already available are so damn good - so unless a whizz-kid appears who can program like IQ the chance of something new and particularly amazing appearing is slim ;) With respect to colourings there *should* be stuff going on - there are still at least 500 colourings available in Ultra Fractal (and/or Fractint and ChaosPro) that are designed as 2D colourings that could be adapted/extended to full-3D but there doesn't seem to be anyone doing this - at the moment the only option is to use the old 2D versions to colour 3D via my wip formula for UF but of course that's somewhat out of date now both in terms of hybrid possibilities and 3D rendering sophistication (global illumination, multiple objects, lakes/walls/floors, true ambient, true DoF, the latest materials models, transparency, refraction etc.). Also AFAIK so far there's no dedicated 3D fractal renderer (of the new ones specifically written for 'bulbs and boxes etc.) that allows multiple layers - or am I missing something ? Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: Sockratease on January 14, 2012, 12:02:25 PM With respect to colourings there *should* be stuff going on - there are still at least 500 colourings available in Ultra Fractal (and/or Fractint and ChaosPro) that are designed as 2D colourings that could be adapted/extended to full-3D but there doesn't seem to be anyone doing this Actually, Chaoscope has been accepting .map files for 3D Attractors and Fractals for years now. So there is still hope that .map colorings can be adapted to more places (like Mandlbulber, Mandelbulb3D, Boxplorer, etc). Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: ker2x on January 14, 2012, 12:37:02 PM imho, i won't complain if the images showcase get less traffic :snore:
And as long as the Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: cKleinhuis on January 14, 2012, 12:41:30 PM too bad the users on this forum just use water for boiling ... i really dont understand paudels question, in science or in live cant - or even in economy - nothing can stay on the "growing" branch, especially in concerns
of new theory and active research, when i look on to the access rates i still encounter a slight growth ( we are nearly having 1,5mio clicks/month) quantity and quality problem ... as always, the forum is not meant as gallery provider, and the gallery has been heavilly restricted to especially lower the amounts of posted images there, could be that this is now boomeranging back, but i dont see a problem yet although i agree through the quality/quantity problematic, the forum is developing more into a software users forum, especially mandelbulber and mandelbulb3d and since only one person actually is able to create formulas for mandelbulb3d ( hi darkie ) there is not much variety, but the programs offer complexity that has not even closely been researched, especially the small functions inversion, ifs functions and all the hybrid formulas are playground enough, and this forum serves as the discussion point about how to create 3d fractals Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: ker2x on January 14, 2012, 01:22:12 PM There is still a lot of stuff to be done in fractals and i'm working on my programming/math capabilies to do it.
a few exemples : - improving speed using GPU - more research on buddhabrot-like rendering (my favorite) - pathtracing/pathmarching to greatly improve quality (i still don't get it, but i will work on it (i tried without success for now)) - improving current software (speed and features). Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: Alef on January 14, 2012, 04:24:27 PM There is still a lot of stuff to be done in fractals and i'm working on my programming/math capabilies to do it. a few exemples : - improving speed using GPU - more research on buddhabrot-like rendering (my favorite) - pathtracing/pathmarching to greatly improve quality (i still don't get it, but i will work on it (i tried without success for now)) - improving current software (speed and features). I think, buddhabrots with more lifelike (religios symbols, natural things and so on going surreal) formulas, and in 3D. Buddhabrots with just mandelbrots and 2 more formulas is quind of boring. Tricorn buddhabrot looks like star of david, but there are another 'real life' things to explore, such us generated moon crescent. Maybe alsou interesting thing would be to animate one fractal into another. Alsou no new holly grail to search for;) And nothing interesting new;) Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: DarkBeam on January 14, 2012, 04:55:40 PM ..................... and since only one person actually is able to create formulas for mandelbulb3d ( hi darkie ) there is not much variety, but the programs offer complexity that has not even closely been researched, especially.......... Well but in the forums I found lots of formulas, but all old, some time ago almost everyone suggested a new formula ;) ... Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: Alef on January 14, 2012, 05:05:51 PM Triplex anumbers and trigonometry are very complex things;)
Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: Aexion on January 14, 2012, 06:02:09 PM There are a lot of things to do, in many fractal fields, and that doesn't mean new formulas, it means new procedures can be done...
For example, if you extrude a 2D fractal with a function (continuous potential..), you will get the classical 3D mandelbrot mountain.. But if you mix several of those functions, then things become very interesting.. Here's an example such approach on the classic mandelbrot set: (http://www.rfractals.net/share/Ribbon_Dancer.jpg) No DE was harmed on the making of this fractal image.. Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: DarkBeam on January 14, 2012, 06:22:12 PM But you live in another dimension :dink:
I was also wondering on "printing" a fractal formula in the surface of normal solids. For example a gnarly on a cube, sphere, cone ... and whatever ;D ... Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: taurus on January 14, 2012, 06:30:41 PM seems to me like the "in former times everything was better" complaint. heard that a million times in a million contexts.
with the development of "real" 3d fractals an enormous change went through the fractal landscape in the past two years - including a whole new species of fractal software, dedicated to create only these 3d pointclouds. honestly, what do you expect? that this development speed will go on for ever? in opposite to the course of the sun, human devolopment is subject to (short term) changes. so my thesis to this discussion is: "in former times everything was different" - take it as a chance! like David Makin and Aexion described, there is a lot of potential left, in finetuning 3d fractal generation. and by the way, i see the restrictins to the gallery completely positive. i don't need to see annother twenty elaborations of a particular fractal (2 or 3d) at one time. imho two or three are quite enogh, so i can keep a clear view of all the rest... keep having fun! :dink: Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: blob on January 14, 2012, 07:12:43 PM I was also wondering on "printing" a fractal formula in the surface of normal solids. For example a gnarly on a cube, sphere, cone ... and whatever ;D ... If I am not mistaken this can be done with glsl so you could try it in QuadFractal which supports loading of 3D meshes and glsl shaders. http://flashlight.slad.cz/?page=projects Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: Pauldelbrot on January 14, 2012, 08:17:45 PM Time of year ;) I'd have thought the opposite -- with most users in the Northern Hemisphere, the winter would favor more indoor activity (such as fractals and forum surfing). So unless most of the contributors are secretly kids that are in school all winter...:) Thing is, the gallery posts lately seem to come from just a handful of userids, instead of the greater variety of even a month or so ago. I wonder why that is? Is there somewhere people have moved on to -- or non-fractal activities? Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: DarkBeam on January 14, 2012, 08:36:38 PM I was also wondering on "printing" a fractal formula in the surface of normal solids. For example a gnarly on a cube, sphere, cone ... and whatever ;D ... If I am not mistaken this can be done with glsl so you could try it in QuadFractal which supports loading of 3D meshes and glsl shaders. http://flashlight.slad.cz/?page=projects Eh, such a luxury ... Polygons and stuff, GLSL... It runs on my PC but MB3D is not that complicated... And see how slow it's? :) Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: cKleinhuis on January 14, 2012, 08:43:28 PM Thing is, the gallery posts lately seem to come from just a handful of userids, instead of the greater variety of even a month or so ago. I wonder why that is? Is there somewhere people have moved on to -- or non-fractal activities? regarding the gallery restrictions, and in my eyes it has become somehow, mainstream, thus the uploads of 3d fractals to deviantart should have grown ... until now it has been only experienced here in the forums, but they reached a wider range of people ( the mandelbulb3d software has been downloaded roughl 10.000 times including the different versions ) that now begin to share their experiments on their well known publishing grounds, e.g. deviant art @darkbeam mandelbulb 3d is amazingly fast, with my 6 cores i can really make use of the realtime feature of this cpu only thing! thanks to hand coded asm code ;) Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: blob on January 14, 2012, 09:01:49 PM @darkbeam mandelbulb 3d is amazingly fast, with my 6 cores i can really make use of the realtime feature of this cpu only thing! thanks to hand coded asm code ;) I don't think he was speaking about m3d, rather he was just saying that what I suggested to him was shit. :-\Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: tit_toinou on January 14, 2012, 09:20:32 PM There is still a lot of stuff to be done in fractals and i'm working on my programming/math capabilies to do it. I'm currently working on the buddhabrot.. I agree there is work to do !a few exemples : - improving speed using GPU - more research on buddhabrot-like rendering (my favorite) - pathtracing/pathmarching to greatly improve quality (i still don't get it, but i will work on it (i tried without success for now)) - improving current software (speed and features). Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: cKleinhuis on January 14, 2012, 10:36:26 PM @buddhabrot people, be sure to add hybrid forms, and a decent explorer ( point + click to fractal position on a 2d map ... )
@blob dont missinterpret the overeagerness of a coder as insult i am waiting for the javascript glsl implementation of subblue .... Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: DarkBeam on January 14, 2012, 11:16:30 PM @darkbeam mandelbulb 3d is amazingly fast, with my 6 cores i can really make use of the realtime feature of this cpu only thing! thanks to hand coded asm code ;) I don't think he was speaking about m3d, rather he was just saying that what I suggested to him was shit. :-\No!!! Not "shit", just not very efficient :) Anyway it depends on your personal taste, if you like spinning fractals with bricks all over ... You will prefer that software :dink: I will not force you to use any soft. But I prefer a faster rendering without all those restrictions (small bailout, one formula, just or quat or hypercomplex...) - Matter of taste :) - and irony apart some functions of the program are very cool (not portable to MB or any other soft, because the GLSL "implicit programming style" makes everything for the programmer with more ease, but cool) thks for suggesting. :) Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: David Makin on January 14, 2012, 11:31:31 PM > I'd have thought the opposite -- with most users in the Northern Hemisphere, the winter would favor more indoor activity (such as fractals and forum surfing). So unless most of the contributors are secretly kids that are in school all winter..
I think you underestimate the number of older members and posters - and they're all hard at "real work" trying to recoup the money they had to fork out on the younger element for that ridiculously expensive festival not long ago - bah humbug :D Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: David Makin on January 14, 2012, 11:35:31 PM With respect to colourings there *should* be stuff going on - there are still at least 500 colourings available in Ultra Fractal (and/or Fractint and ChaosPro) that are designed as 2D colourings that could be adapted/extended to full-3D but there doesn't seem to be anyone doing this Actually, Chaoscope has been accepting .map files for 3D Attractors and Fractals for years now. So there is still hope that .map colorings can be adapted to more places (like Mandlbulber, Mandelbulb3D, Boxplorer, etc). Huh ? No I mean colouring *algorithms* as in UF "*.ucl" files - aren't .map files just gradients ? In addition many of these types of colourings could be adapted to produce an DE method based on the values normally used for colouring as the solid condition instead of iteration and inside/outside boundary etc. - or indeed for heightfield alternatives. Plus in addition to alternative ways of colouring the fractal surface they could *all* be used for materials mapping of the fractal surface - for any/all lighting parameters from shininess to bump mapping - even for variable 3D+ translucency/colours etc. within the solid itself ;) Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: DarkBeam on January 14, 2012, 11:38:32 PM * would like to see more orbit traps in MB3D * :angel1:
Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: subblue on January 15, 2012, 12:36:21 AM i am waiting for the javascript glsl implementation of subblue .... :) I've been diverted on another very exciting fractal related project these past few months, which should hopefully be making a very big splash pretty soon. My WebGL fractal stuff is still in the works and I have some fun new stuff I look forward to sharing once it's ready... ;)Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: Pauldelbrot on January 15, 2012, 01:20:59 AM :) I've been diverted on another very exciting fractal related project these past few months, which should hopefully be making a very big splash pretty soon. A true 3D Mandelbrot set? ;) Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: ker2x on January 15, 2012, 02:15:06 AM @buddhabrot people, be sure to add hybrid forms, and a decent explorer ( point + click to fractal position on a 2d map ... ) Sure, here it is : https://github.com/emmmile/buddha Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: Sockratease on January 15, 2012, 01:08:57 PM With respect to colourings there *should* be stuff going on - there are still at least 500 colourings available in Ultra Fractal (and/or Fractint and ChaosPro) that are designed as 2D colourings that could be adapted/extended to full-3D but there doesn't seem to be anyone doing this Actually, Chaoscope has been accepting .map files for 3D Attractors and Fractals for years now. So there is still hope that .map colorings can be adapted to more places (like Mandlbulber, Mandelbulb3D, Boxplorer, etc). Huh ? No I mean colouring *algorithms* as in UF "*.ucl" files - aren't .map files just gradients ? In addition many of these types of colourings could be adapted to produce an DE method based on the values normally used for colouring as the solid condition instead of iteration and inside/outside boundary etc. - or indeed for heightfield alternatives. Plus in addition to alternative ways of colouring the fractal surface they could *all* be used for materials mapping of the fractal surface - for any/all lighting parameters from shininess to bump mapping - even for variable 3D+ translucency/colours etc. within the solid itself ;) Oh. I totally misunderstood what was written - I have no idea what I was thinking either. > I'd have thought the opposite -- with most users in the Northern Hemisphere, the winter would favor more indoor activity (such as fractals and forum surfing). So unless most of the contributors are secretly kids that are in school all winter.. I think you underestimate the number of older members and posters - and they're all hard at "real work" trying to recoup the money they had to fork out on the younger element for that ridiculously expensive festival not long ago - bah humbug :D And a Big Bah Humbug to you too! Dang those holidays. They left me unprepared for the emergency expenses to my car and house which followed. Quote from: Ebeneezer Scrooge What’s Christmas time... but a time for paying bills without money. Every awesome dude who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. :gum: Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: blob on January 16, 2012, 04:16:34 AM Anyway it depends on your personal taste, if you like spinning fractals with bricks all over ... You will prefer that software :dink: As if this was my favorite software I use above all else... And as if I loved that sample bricks shader... Man you are incredible... ;DThe point was that if you are really dying for "printing a fractal formula in the surface of normal solids" then writing your own GLSL shaders is presumably the only immediately available way to get there. Quote I will not force you to use any soft. But I prefer a faster rendering without all those restrictions (small bailout, one formula, just or quat or hypercomplex...) - Matter of taste :) - and irony apart some functions of the program are very cool (not portable to MB or any other soft, because the GLSL "implicit programming style" makes everything for the programmer with more ease, but cool) thks for suggesting. :) I sure hope you are not forcing me to use anything. ;D And make sure to optimize your m3d formulas because some of them are so slow it's really too bad... O0 Teasing aside and FWIW, the rendering slowness of QuadFractal depends much on the level of detail the 3D fractal mesh it generates. And for sure I'd love to have procedural fractal texturing/coloring in m3d of the kind that can be found in QuadFractal or better even in Kerkythea but are we ever going to get that? From what I gather from what you write this can't be done with custom formulas, can it? Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: cKleinhuis on January 16, 2012, 09:52:42 AM @buddhabrot people, be sure to add hybrid forms, and a decent explorer ( point + click to fractal position on a 2d map ... ) Sure, here it is : https://github.com/emmmile/buddha any chance for windows binaries ? Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: Prokofiev on January 16, 2012, 10:10:52 AM I'd like to add my point of view on this matter.
The activity on fractalforums is clearly focused, for many weeks now, on fractal renderings, mostly with the 3D software. Fractal art is something important and it certainly deserves a great place here. But there has been very little posts on the subjects of theory, mathematics, exhibitions, research news or natural patterns. A bit sad, I think, since there is no other place to discuss such matters on the internet. I try to add some topics on those matters from time to time, but i feel the only one interested in that. Now, it is true there has not been many new theoretical discoveries lately. So very little thing to discuss about. Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: ker2x on January 16, 2012, 10:11:42 AM @buddhabrot people, be sure to add hybrid forms, and a decent explorer ( point + click to fractal position on a 2d map ... ) Sure, here it is : https://github.com/emmmile/buddha any chance for windows binaries ? i have a very old windows binary hidden somewhere, it's a Qt project and should compile without major trouble... in theory. In practice : it's a !%@# pain. i'll try again :) Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: David Makin on January 18, 2012, 11:44:55 PM With respect to colourings there *should* be stuff going on - there are still at least 500 colourings available in Ultra Fractal (and/or Fractint and ChaosPro) that are designed as 2D colourings that could be adapted/extended to full-3D but there doesn't seem to be anyone doing this Actually, Chaoscope has been accepting .map files for 3D Attractors and Fractals for years now. So there is still hope that .map colorings can be adapted to more places (like Mandlbulber, Mandelbulb3D, Boxplorer, etc). Huh ? No I mean colouring *algorithms* as in UF "*.ucl" files - aren't .map files just gradients ? In addition many of these types of colourings could be adapted to produce an DE method based on the values normally used for colouring as the solid condition instead of iteration and inside/outside boundary etc. - or indeed for heightfield alternatives. Plus in addition to alternative ways of colouring the fractal surface they could *all* be used for materials mapping of the fractal surface - for any/all lighting parameters from shininess to bump mapping - even for variable 3D+ translucency/colours etc. within the solid itself ;) Quick example that I hope shows how other colourings could be useful if extended to 3D.... http://www.fractalforums.com/index.php?action=gallery;sa=view;id=9967 (http://www.fractalforums.com/index.php?action=gallery;sa=view;id=9967) edit: Whoops ! Sorry - I meant to post the params..... Code: MMF-Lichen#3 {Title: Re: Is this place slowly dying? Post by: Alef on January 24, 2012, 06:31:23 PM Looking throught threads it is realy suprising how much interesting stuff were found here. Mandelbox, mandelbrot, kali formula. Forum members are pretty smart folks;) Most of other forums, including fractals, would be just blablablah. I think, there must be some gloryous target to search for. Let it be 3D hemoglobine knot, whatever. |