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I very like doing fractal and I want to animate them UF5 looks an obvious choice..Am I right or there's a cheaper (or free) alternative to do image and video fractal...  I'm a real beginner too....

Fractal Explorer! :) Plus many others too, it depends on what you want to do

FE can produce great fractals

http://www.chaospro.de

It's free and the interface is similar to UF5

It does not do deep zooms, but is a great starter program!

To answer the question - no, it's worth around $1500 (as compared to other commercial gfx software).

I also recommend ChaosPro as a free alternative - ChaosPro can even use the older type of UF formulas so those can be imported from the UF formula database.

in opposite to ulta fractal and all other fractal software, talented and skilled users can really make money by using photoshop & co. that's the difference in pricing. for a designer (who needs to live from his art) uf is nothing more than a toy - the bitter truth.

is my favorite free 2d fractal program as well. but it can't reach uf in ease of use.
if you really want to establish a "workflow" with your fractals, ultra fractal is definitely worth the money. and if you're unsure yet, the trial version works nice...  ;D

I am a Vj so what's the best option for animation.  I know that UF5 can do animation but is it the best ?  And does the rendering is good in that software ???

thanx Ben

In my eyes it is surely worth the price, deep zooms , excellent formula system, and very easy to use anims, layering and stuff

downside is that it is suitable for 2d only

as vj i would point you to gpu renderers, especially flame renderers, and 3d ones. . .
Because as vj you need quantity, and fewer quality :)

my point of view

btw i own a uf5 and frederic always provides me with my serial when i need it

Since it's possible to make UF do anything Photoshop or even say Maya can do (plus a whole lot more) (including real-time previews) I contest that statement !!
Also anyone with even simplistic knowledge of coding can do this - whereas few are competent enough or have the tools to write plug-ins for Photoshop/Maya etc.

Mine too! ;)

Since when can UF import (and more importantly Export) 3D models in obj, fbx, 3ds, and other formats?

I'm afraid I must contest that statement !!

yes, i must have missed something too. it is some time ago, since i played with the trial of uf5, but i never noticed a brush tool or a nurbs modeller there.

difficult question. it's like asking which instrument is the best - guitar or piano.
it' a matter of what YOU want.
christian pointed out well. uf is surely the most advanced fractal software (developped for decades), but only for 2d fractals. gpu renderer are surely the fastest, but especially fragmentarium, needs some background knowlege and not every hardware runs it at the first try.

it's up to you - play around with all you can get and decide yourself.
if you're looking for a programm, that automatically creates nice animations, with two or three clicks, i'm afraid you won't be happy with all mentioned here...

for me ultrafractal has a special role, because in my eyes they moved the formula definition forwards, extending the fractint base, and ultrafractal has always been a resource for grabbing out the formulas from it, the decent formula editor with dynamically (animatable) properties is just amazing, and as i said before, the animation feature is really sophisticated

in the 90s i was always wanting to have a program that allows deep zoom animations of morphing fractals, and since uf5 had the animation edition my wish came true, although i didnt use it as much as i wanted, but for formula editing with native complex number parsing it is just beautiful

and the thing i love even more than the animation feature is the object code structure that was introduced with uf5, since then it was an ease to implement hybrid fractals, which basically offers the endles fractal generation features known from mandelbulber or mandelbulb3d....

dont know if chaospro has adopted this object structure ...

and hence you can just copy and paste the amazing long locations provided by pauldelbrot, and it just renders it is nice, did i mention network rendering ?!
 O0 :angel1:

Apart from solid printing why else would you need to export ?

To do REAL Art!  :clown:  :gum:

(http://www.sockrateaze.com/stuff/cowbulb.gif)

What about stealing vids on Youtube like some of your colleagues?

That could easily be done in UF by importing into UF rather than exporting from it - in fact in that particular case it would almost certainly have been easier anyway ;)

No chance at all of it being easier.  That was done with a physics simulation.  Nigh completely automated.

UF is nice, but you are just so far off base claiming it can do everything Maya can do - it hurts the credibility of your other statements.

so, just to make it clear, other fractal programs copy functionality, i mean script and formula parsing, this just marks the special position this program has,
surely as dave pointed out it could handle any data format, but lets be cool, it is hard enough to just import an image as orbit trap shape ;), so, in my
eyes the anser to the question if uf is worth 120$ it is just easy as if i programmed such a tool, i would take an equal amount of money to reward
myself for producing such a great software, and so, the answer to the originating question is: YES!

OK - I'll rephrase - just add the word "potentially" and exclude exportation of non-image types - since if it can be programmed, then you can program it in UF, in a language that's no more difficult than BASIC and only requires UF and no external compilers etc.
With the Animation version of UF doing any form of physics simulation would not be a problem, frankly I'm surprised no-one's done it yet....

yes i would say so but only if you want to do serious art

Yes - just compare it with the price of similar gfx software e.g. Photoshop...