Title: Critique of fractal art Post by: Alef on November 06, 2012, 08:40:00 PM Well there are lot of fractal pics and videos. Wast majority of videos are random eyecandy shapes with meaningless names like "Steampunk techno garden of cubes" with "Fly throught". It soon gets boring.
In theory 3D fractal programms are enought poverfull to create some kind of meaningfull videos. Say "Flight throught fractal Milky Way and asteroid belt with landing on Uranus", "Big city fractal life" or "Tartigates in swamp" or "Swim throught underwater coral reef". Maybe 3D zooming and forward movement is a weak spot. Often are hard to just fly forward throght some box, maybe too small scale and unexpected results mixed with zoom and movement, not shure. In 2D it is lack of instruments, it don't have objects, naturalistic lights or direction where to fly. So this could be a right direction where to move. (better zooming capabilities and different pattern box formulas) and some thematical creations. Thematical but not so fractal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBfWfzZRnYA&feature=plcp (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBfWfzZRnYA&feature=plcp) There are few interesting Buddhabrot pictures. Some are cosmic, some are like comb jellies, but they are very few. There is not so mutch Buddhabrot renderers, at least one buddhabrot renderer with many formulas and switches could be a righ thing. Ultra Fractal implementations of buddhabrots are somewhat plain, single channel with Fractints map don't have enought colour dimensionality. Buddhabrot and comb jelly (http://cabin.users.geeky.net/buddhabrot1.jpg) (http://www.mbari.org/expeditions/GOC12/legs/leg2/logbookL2/images/day5/Beroe_forskalii_500.jpg) In deviantart.com portal the most popular are Fractal Flame images who looks somewhat similar like buddhabrot images. And not Ultra Fractal escape time pictures, throught Apophysis don't have many formulas to research and have just terrible interface if compared with UF. But fractal flames just looks smoother, deeper, more natural and more 3D. Just smooth pauldebrot renders can compete with fractal flames. Throught now Mandelbulb3D started to beat Fractal Flames, but it still are much high tech, and some like more natural pictures. 4th the most all times popular in deviantart, and IMHO the best. (http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/243/3/7/37cdb8c0966aa1d9f5d9c1f308de7a32-d5d2be8.png) Anyway fractalforums is specific place with folks inclined towards exact sciences and having specific tastes for all new tech so deviantart with lots of professional artists could be a better indicator. Of corse my artistic skills are somewhat bleak, but I can allways criticise or appreciate others;) Long time ceased to develop Fractal Explorer still beats Ultra Fractal when it comes to smooth aesthetics of the final result, throught UF have more content and layering. This should have very mutch to do with colours and colour mapping offering more effects than one dimensional gradient. So alsou more beautifull colours, 3D colour effects would be right direction. Maybe Fractal Explorer like colours on 3D fractals. Title: Re: Critique of fractal art Post by: David Makin on November 06, 2012, 10:33:38 PM Please remember that UF can do *anything* that Fractal explorer can do - you don't have to use gradient colouring.
Title: Re: Critique of fractal art Post by: Alef on November 07, 2012, 05:16:53 PM But it would be pretty hard to implement colours just like in Fractal Explorer. Especialy without source codes and guessing how it worked. But fractint style mapping don't allows to have one colour beinh washed on another so it probably somehow mapped 3 channels independently.
Title: Re: Critique of fractal art Post by: David Makin on November 07, 2012, 09:27:18 PM But it would be pretty hard to implement colours just like in Fractal Explorer. Especialy without source codes and guessing how it worked. But fractint style mapping don't allows to have one colour beinh washed on another so it probably somehow mapped 3 channels independently. That's just direct colour mode in UF - actually it would be pretty easy to write a plug-in direct colouring that allows *any* UF plug-in colouring separately for any number of channels and then re-combine any way you like ;) Title: Re: Critique of fractal art Post by: CeleXaoS on November 07, 2012, 10:33:14 PM http://orbittrap.ca/?p=3542 (http://orbittrap.ca/?p=3542) http://orbittrap.ca/?p=3510 (http://orbittrap.ca/?p=3510) ;D ;D Title: Re: Critique of fractal art Post by: taurus on November 08, 2012, 10:17:34 AM Please remember that UF can do *anything* that Fractal explorer can do - you don't have to use gradient colouring. Yeah, yeah, you claim that often. :gum: And with a tooth brush you can do *anything* you do with a broom. Title: Re: Critique of fractal art Post by: cKleinhuis on November 08, 2012, 10:28:01 AM lol what is the homepage of the fractal explorer !? i just find some programs who are NOT able to read uf params ;)
Title: Re: Critique of fractal art Post by: David Makin on November 08, 2012, 11:10:20 AM lol what is the homepage of the fractal explorer !? i just find some programs who are NOT able to read uf params ;) ????? AFAIK the only programs that can read UF params are UF and ChaosPro... Title: Re: Critique of fractal art Post by: David Makin on November 08, 2012, 11:11:20 AM Yeah, yeah, you claim that often. :gum: And with a tooth brush you can do *anything* you do with a broom. FFS that analogy is nuts - it's more like you can do anything with a multi-puropose cleaning tool that you can do with a brush !! However you do need to RTFM. Title: Re: Critique of fractal art Post by: David Makin on November 08, 2012, 11:23:30 AM BTW I seem to remember someone either on FracFan forum:
http://woosie.net/fracfan/index.php (http://woosie.net/fracfan/index.php) Or possibly on the UF mailing list, or at deviantart has got the last source code to Fractal Explorer, unfortunately I can't remember who it was :( Title: Re: Critique of fractal art Post by: taurus on November 08, 2012, 12:09:16 PM FFS that analogy is nuts Oh, I never awaited to convice you, as you once wrote here http://www.fractalforums.com/ultrafractal/boxplorer2-4-mac-with-dof/msg48913/#msg48913 (http://www.fractalforums.com/ultrafractal/boxplorer2-4-mac-with-dof/msg48913/#msg48913): Quote Since it's possible to make UF do anything Photoshop or even say Maya can do (plus a whole lot more)... THIS is nuts! :crazy:Title: Re: Critique of fractal art Post by: Sockratease on November 08, 2012, 01:21:45 PM Oh, I never awaited to convice you, as you once wrote here http://www.fractalforums.com/ultrafractal/boxplorer2-4-mac-with-dof/msg48913/#msg48913 (http://www.fractalforums.com/ultrafractal/boxplorer2-4-mac-with-dof/msg48913/#msg48913): THIS is nuts! :crazy: Now let's be fair - I got him to qualify that later in the same thread. David is just a bit over enthusiastic about the capabilities of UF, that's not a bad thing. But it does lead to the occasional ... exaggeration :scared: Title: Re: Critique of fractal art Post by: Alef on November 08, 2012, 03:27:27 PM http://orbittrap.ca/?p=3542 (http://orbittrap.ca/?p=3542) ;) There are different opinions;)http://orbittrap.ca/?p=3510 (http://orbittrap.ca/?p=3510) ;D ;D lol what is the homepage of the fractal explorer !? i just find some programs who are NOT able to read uf params ;) http://www.eclectasy.com/Fractal-Explorer/index.html (http://www.eclectasy.com/Fractal-Explorer/index.html) Fractal Explorer is a freeware fractal generator that can produce mysterious and beautiful mathematically-based images. Not just a tool for professionals, FE can provide hours of entertainment for beginners and experts alike ! Site news: January 2005 Fractal Explorer 2.02 has been released. Welcome to the download page! :hurt: But I found some Fractal Explorer spot files ( .FRS) in fractalforums. Title: Re: Critique of fractal art Post by: David Makin on November 08, 2012, 07:42:26 PM Just to add to that what I think of UF's capabilities also holds for ChaosPro though I still find ChaosPro a little unstable at times.
Title: Re: Critique of fractal art Post by: taurus on November 08, 2012, 11:02:22 PM No harm meant, David. In fact UF is a great software tool for 2d fractals. And while chaos pro can handle the same formulas, uf is far superior when it comes to intuitive work. I just felt like having to return the faux pas with that maya/photoshop comparison... :dink:
On the other hand one of my all time favorite fractal artists is jennyfnf - a real FE master. I never saw something similar from UF. It is not allways a case of what's technically possible, often it is more important what's possible with an artistic ease... Title: Re: Critique of fractal art Post by: David Makin on November 09, 2012, 04:10:55 AM As far as what's technically possible is concerned I've recently added some simple image processing classes to UF - as has Ron Barnett (reb).
Mine are simple whole image changes like gamma etc. that are applied via a chosen colour parameter and a merge mode and Ron's are more image/pixel oriented. I intend to add options so Ron's plug-ins can be used in my formula but for now here's an example - just load an image into the image parameter and then play with the processing options using the parameters in the adjustment layers section/s. Code: Fractal1 {Title: Re: Critique of fractal art Post by: Alef on November 11, 2012, 05:56:10 PM If compared with it's clone Chaos Pro in UF cleraly it is much more easy to explorer watever coeffitients, especialy complex and julia seeds and layering is integral part. It works much smoother, less bugs. But it don't have native 3D and you can't go throught all the gradients by two clicks. Well, and pluggins are evil feature with only programmers knowing how to use them.
There were some pretty cool fractal pictures and gifs using images. There are UF implementation of Fractal Explorer colour methods, of them "log counting" and especialy "orbit counting" are pretty good. But without special Fractal Explorer colour features, such as using 3 channels independently (I supose. Hadn't seen the sources, but multidimensional effects like that can not be made without many channels, throught you can use layering). http://www.fractalforums.com/ultrafractal/fractal-explorer-colour-methods/ (http://www.fractalforums.com/ultrafractal/fractal-explorer-colour-methods/) Well, almoust certainly in UF or its Chaos Pro clone you can't implement colour palette (map) generated as wave function of 3 channels. I kind of like this feature becouse no matter how much there are map files, allways it is not what you want. But random number generator allways generate something uncontrolable with unnatural exess of blue. * * * About the youtube videos. I noticed that you will get many watches if idea of your video is good even if not so great visualy. This is weak point of most fractal videos. * * * In deviantart there were too fractal images entering most popular in 24 hours. One is Apophysis (but Apophysis is boring): http://apofun.deviantart.com/art/Fleur-Translucide-337044830 (http://apofun.deviantart.com/art/Fleur-Translucide-337044830) Other are Mandelbulb3D: http://grahamsym.deviantart.com/art/Metallic-Swirl-336832046 (http://grahamsym.deviantart.com/art/Metallic-Swirl-336832046) * * * Here are example, what can not be done with single channel maping and without layering. You just can't get colours crossing. Title: Re: Critique of fractal art Post by: Alef on November 11, 2012, 05:57:20 PM Here is another one. Probably all hypnotic images are made like this.
Title: Re: Critique of fractal art Post by: David Makin on November 11, 2012, 10:59:53 PM But without special Fractal Explorer colour features, such as using 3 channels independently (I supose. Hadn't seen the sources, but multidimensional effects like that can not be made without many channels, throught you can use layering). http://www.fractalforums.com/ultrafractal/fractal-explorer-colour-methods/ (http://www.fractalforums.com/ultrafractal/fractal-explorer-colour-methods/) Well, almoust certainly in UF or its Chaos Pro clone you can't implement colour palette (map) generated as wave function of 3 channels. I kind of like this feature becouse no matter how much there are map files, allways it is not what you want. Actually you're wrong - UF has direct colour mode which can use RGBA individually, that's what the "color" variable type is for - direct mode is not used as much as it could be because if the standard UF gradient is used in some way as source colour specification (or indeed to specify up to 400*4 float values from 0 to 1 to be used for any purpose) then changing the gradient requires a complete re-render of the layer concerned, but then again FE also has to re-render if you want to change the colouring ;) Although I agree that I was a little over-enthusiastic about UF's potential with respect to Maya, Photoshop etc. it is most definitely true that UF could reproduce *exactly* anything done in FE, it just requires the correct colouring algorithms to be written - and doesn't even require the newer class-based "plug-in" formula method to do so. I wish I could remember who it was who had the source for FE because with that the FE colourings could be transferred to UF by any formula authors interested in doing so. Also for the "colours crossing" examole - this is possible in UF for specific custom colourings using the old-style .UCL files but UF could actually be made far more versatile by writing a newer class based colouring that takes 3 (or more) normal plug-in colourings each applied to a separate channel - this would give you any plug-in colouring for red, any for green, any for blue and each could be based either on portions of the gradient or user-defined colour parameter values or even values from an imported image. |