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Hi there I have been messing with fractals in a small way since I got my first Amiga in the early 90s. These days I use essentially 3 tools (toys!  ;D) Mandelbulber, Mandelbulb 3D and Visions of Chaos (VOC). They all have their good aspects but there is one feature which out of the 3 only VOC has - a randomise function. Attached are 2 images from VOC - one shows the randomise panel and the other is of an odd form I came up with one day using the random functions. It's not like anything I would ever have created by careful selection and tweaking.  (My intention is to use this form in a little animation where it rotates and morphs - haven't done it yet!)

VOC's random panel has only a number of all the various parameters available but these are the fundamental ones. To begin I might randomise all the parameters in the random panel and as aspects start to look interesting I untick them until I'm down to just a couple. From there I start tweaking them manually until I zero in on the aspect that interests me.

Anyway, I was interested in 2 things:
1) Are there other software (fractal and graphic) people know of that have a randomise function?
2) Do you think it would be a good idea if Mandelbulber and Mandelbulb 3D considered introducing a randomise function?

Apophysis creates a random batch of fractals at startup. It's very useful for beginners because examples help to understand the program.

Thanks Dinkydau - it has been quite a while since I last used Apophysis. Will look into it.

You can make a random batch in Apophysis at any time using ctrl-b or the Random Batch entry under the File menu.
Also Apo has a script editor and you could write your own script to generate random flames if you're familiar with Delphi.
You'd have more control with a script.  Using the built-in random batch generator you can only designate which variations/plugins should be used when generating the random flames.

Jwildfire ;)

I noticed that for some reason the script function in apophysis 7x is gone. That's really an immense loss. I actually had to go back to apophysis 2.08 to write an appropriate script for the fractal that I'm going to submit for the fractal art contest, just to get the gradient that I needed.

Sorry I missed it earlier - thanks cKleinhuis I haven't come across Jwildfire before. I have downloaded it and will be giving it a look at over the next few days.  :D