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hi, i am a fractal artist renderer, i am looking for a clean serial number for ultra fractal 5, please help! on a limited income! :'(

What you are requesting is illegal.

Get the serial from the UltraFractal Website ONLY.

Any other source is illegal.  Please do not request illegal activities here, and you will be welcome!

Try ChaosPro!  It's free and just like UltraFractal (except no deep zooms).

http://www.chaospro.de


EDIT - this is the second warning you have received for this!!!

Ask again and you will be Banned.

Thanks for the link!  ChaosPro looks like it does ALOT more than Ultrafractal, unless I missed the UF features for strange attractors, mandelbulbs, etc.  Cool!

The Rev

Unfortunately the main thing that ChaosPro does more than UF is crash.
Admittedly Michael has added more directly customised options for 3D and strange attractors etc. in ChaoPro than are available in UF, but such things are available as UF formulas (though not 3D strange attractors as yet AFAIK).
In UF for Mandelbulbs and Mandelboxes there is my formula:
http://www.fractalforums.com/mandelbulb-implementation/update-to-the-mmf-wip-formula-for-ultra-fractal (http://www.fractalforums.com/mandelbulb-implementation/update-to-the-mmf-wip-formula-for-ultra-fractal)
and formulas by Ron Barnett (I think in reb.ulb).
For (2D) strange attractors try mmf4.ufm:Attractors (read the info and parameter hints for use).

Thanks for the link David!  I had no idea you could do 3D in UF at all.  I'm wanting to make the leap from 2D to 3D, so this will really help me.

The Rev

The Rev, if you really want to take the bulb/box train, I suggest you try Mandelbulb3D by Jesse or Mandelbulber by Buddhi.
Dave's UF formula can do the job, and if you're very good at using UF, you might find it easier to learn than a new app, but it's a lot slower than dedicated apps. Of course, you will be able to leverage UF features like multi-layering which do not exist in M3D or Mbulber, but dedicated apps are much more powerful IMHO (hybrids, speed...). I have tried a little Ron's formula and I think it's even slower than Dave's.

I've only very rarely crashed ChaosPro, but admittedly I do not write my own formulas - so that may have something to do with it.

I find ChaosPro to be very stable on every system I have run it on - even on my mac under WINE!

Odd how different people get such different results with the same exact software...

Thanks for the advice.  I did download Mandelbulb3D and am learning/tinkering with it.  I've also downloaded ChaosPro for future tinkering.

I do have a question, tho.  How does UF handle 3D rendering?  I mean, doesn't it need a ray tracer built in?

The Rev

The ray tracer is part of the code written by the formula author.

ChaosPro is OK most of the time for me, it's only when I want large images or long animations or I'm exploring values on a given parameter in certain fgormulas. Of course crashing when doing large images or long animations is a severe problem.

In UF with respect to 3D the problem is basically that UF was designed with standard 2D escape-time fractals in mind so Frederik wrote it in such a way that information from one pixel is not easily shared with another and there is no random-access to the screen buffer - things not generally necessary for 2D escape-time but pretty much essential or at least useful for 3D fractals, flame fractals (including 2D), strange attractors (including 2D) etc.
I believe something may be in progress on this particular issue as well as something interesting for Mac users :)

So the reason my UF formula is slower than the dedicated apps is essentially because it does extra work for every pixel in order to get the normals. The reason Ron's is slower than mine is slightly different, here Ron's is in the new class-based format which has more run-time overheads but allows significantly more variety/control by the user.
The benefits you get from using UF are that you have access to a much greater variety of colouring algorithms than the dedicated apps, you get multi-layering (otherwise only available in ChaosPro I think) and for a lot of people the fact that the GUI is already very familiar.