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Author Topic: Deep Zooming in Ultra Fractal  (Read 9322 times)
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fractalwizz
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« on: May 10, 2008, 01:07:10 AM »

Every time I try to make a deep zoom in ultrafractal, it swirves off, and then comes back to the end image. Is there some way to get around that? huh?
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Sockratease
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« Reply #1 on: May 10, 2008, 03:37:31 PM »

Well...  I never used ultrafractal but have been told it is very similar to chaos pro (which I use a lot!).  If that is the case, I may have an answer for you.

I had the same problem with chaos pro when ever I tried to set my keyframes with anything other than a direct and automated zoom in.  If I dragged the screen just a teeny bit to center a mandala, the drag was back calculated all the way to the beginning and it went all over the place. A small drag when zoomed in deep equals a huge displacement when zoomed out!

If having something properly centered was really important to my animations I only had 2 choices - I could zoom back out (right click in chaos pro) and zoom back in (double left click) repeatedly until I got a view I liked and then set the keyframe.  But No Dragging the image!

The other trick that always gave nice results was to just zoom in to the deepest point I could go before things broke down, and then set my FIRST keyframe.  Then simply reset to the default view and set a second keyframe.  It zoomed out, and I had to reverse the video to make it a dive in to the image instead of a leap out!

The drawback to that is that it is just a 2 keyframe animation, but the iterations scaled back smoothly and often produced unexpected images.

I hope that helps.
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bradorpoints
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« Reply #2 on: May 10, 2008, 10:19:28 PM »

The problem you are having is most like caused by spline tension - something you normally want to have in place, but with huge camera movements - it will throw you way off course.  To proove this - set up a test animation or render something you already have at a very low resolution.  Then enable a linear "camera" motion by opening up the timeline editor.  Change the first and last keyframes of all location values to linear.  This is done by starting with the frist keyframes - press and hold the shift key and then click on each starting keyframe.  Once they are all highlighted - change the value to linear by selecting the straight line icon (the one where the icon shows the line diagonally) oin the value drop-down menu.  Do the same with the end key frames.  Here's what it looks like:


The downside to linear motion is the motion is at full speed right off the bat, and at the end - it will stop abruptly.  The way I get nice acceleration and de-acceleration is to put a seoncd keyframe (that zooms into the set very slightly) on the timeline about 60 or 90 frames into the animation.  Leave the first and second keyframes with a curve value.  The next keyframe - 60, 90, 120 frames before the last frame (and only slightly less zoomed in than the last frame, assuming you are zooming in) needs to be set to linear.  Then the last keyframe is a curve.  This tells the interpreter to interpret a path between the keyframes on a curve.  The vast majority of the motion will be linear - and will not deviate from the rigid path.  Ultra Fractal is really good about manually controlling your curves - this is something I've never been able to work on Chaos Pro.
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fractalwizz
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« Reply #3 on: May 11, 2008, 12:40:38 AM »

that makes a lot more sense
thanks grin
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Sockratease
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« Reply #4 on: May 11, 2008, 01:12:37 PM »

Yes, that is a great feature!

Chaos Pro only has linear or spline options as a global thing, for the entire animation.

I didn't know it could be set to keyframes in Ultrafractal!

One day I'll be budgeted for more play software, I just blew money on a 3D program for semi-pro work though.  Till then, it's still the free fractal stuff for now.

Thanks a lot for the explanation! 

It's great to see you back too! (I just watched Biocursion again last week too!)
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bradorpoints
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« Reply #5 on: May 26, 2008, 02:09:19 AM »

I'm hoping for greater camera control in future versions of UF. 

glad you like biocursion.  My favorite clips are "bleeding star" and "meep".  I've only watched parts of it since completing it - spending all my spare time for a couple of years burned me out a bit.  The site will be updated in about a month or so.  More gallery images and half of a 720p animation that's been rendering on ~30MGhz of collective processing capacity for about ten months.

What 3D software did you acquire?  The title sequences and the "boxlady" in biocursion were all done with Lightwave 8.5.  Originally I wasn't slated to make any fractal animation - just boxlady sequences.
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Sockratease
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« Reply #6 on: May 26, 2008, 12:16:15 PM »

Well...  I have a VERY Low Budget.

I got Carrara from Daz 3D.  I was using their free "Studio" program, but they had a Great Sale where Carrara (3D Rendering and animation), Hexxagon (a 3D Modeling Program), Bryce 6 (a 3D Landscape program), and a couple lip sync packages for 3D Figures were all bundled for $199.  (Sale still on till the end of May!)

I would have preferred 3DS Max, but that is 5 or 6 times the price of this entire suite of programs!!

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fractalwizz
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« Reply #7 on: September 27, 2008, 06:11:19 PM »

I just upgraded to a new version of UF 5 and I tried out Brador Points's corrections. They don't work.

* aaa.avi (133.5 KB - downloaded 195 times.)
« Last Edit: September 27, 2008, 06:19:09 PM by fractalwizz » Logged

David Makin
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« Reply #8 on: September 28, 2008, 11:36:59 AM »

I just upgraded to a new version of UF 5 and I tried out Brador Points's corrections. They don't work.

I think I know the problem you're talking about, it's because when both changing magnification and location simultaneously UF doesn't change the location correctly. I think Jos Leys mentioned this to Frederik a while ago and gave a calculation that would fix the problem, hopefully Frederik will add it in one of the next versions of UF.
In the meantime the only solution is to add extra keyframes.
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cKleinhuis
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« Reply #9 on: September 28, 2008, 12:51:56 PM »

another point when talking about deep zooms and moving camera, you must keep in mind that when zoomed really deep in, very small changes in position can destroy the whole path
e.g. you have a nive spot and zoom in to another spot, then you have changed the center of your fractal, the first and the last frames of the animations are correct, but right before the end you usually only see garbage from an automatic calculated path ... sad
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David Makin
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« Reply #10 on: September 28, 2008, 04:26:54 PM »

another point when talking about deep zooms and moving camera, you must keep in mind that when zoomed really deep in, very small changes in position can destroy the whole path
e.g. you have a nive spot and zoom in to another spot, then you have changed the center of your fractal, the first and the last frames of the animations are correct, but right before the end you usually only see garbage from an automatic calculated path ... sad
 afro

That's the problem I was referring to - Jos Leys calculation involved taking into consideration the change in magnification and adjusting the movement path accordingly.
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cKleinhuis
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« Reply #11 on: September 29, 2008, 01:16:00 AM »

@david: you have a description at hand ?

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David Makin
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« Reply #12 on: September 29, 2008, 01:51:41 AM »

I just checked and Jos's suggestion involved modifying the change in magnification so that distance changes would be consistent, rather than modifying the distance to match (exponential) changes in the magnification.

An algorithm that uses the fact that the distances involved are inversely proportional to the magnification and uses the number of frames concerned as well as the start and end locations and the start and end magnifications is required. I can see that it's possible for linear change in magnification but I'm not so sure how to do it for exponential change in magnification.
« Last Edit: September 29, 2008, 02:05:01 AM by David Makin » Logged

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« Reply #13 on: September 29, 2008, 08:13:02 PM »

OK I think I worked out a method no matter what function the magnification changes follow.

Assume we have n+1 frames from frame 1 to frame n+1.
We have a change of location that involves travelling a total distance D (from frame 1 to frame n+1).

Considering the first n frames we have magnifications m1 to mn.
And take the distances travelled between frames as d1 to dn (where d1 is the distance to travel between frame 1 and frame 2).

For apparent smooth and consistent movement we want mi*di = constant, i.e.

m1*d1 = m2*d2 = m3*d3 = ......= mn*dn = C

We also have:

d1 + d2 + d3 + ..... + dn = D

Substituting we get:

C/m1 + C/m2  + C/m3 +.....+ C/mn = D

Giving:  C = D/(1/m1 + 1/m2 + 1/m3 +......+ 1/mn)

Substituting back we can get the frame distances from di = C/mi

Obviously with some fiddling you could probably add things like perceptual ease-in and/or ease-out on the distances.

Edit:
I should add that the above probably has an equivalent method based on calculus that's more elegant and faster to calculate but I think such a method would be dependant on the function used for the changes in magnification.
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« Reply #14 on: September 29, 2008, 11:26:52 PM »

i see, nice approach, but i have another thing to mention, it is not only the speed of the movement, it is also simply the path it is following,
sometimes it crosses interesting points while zooming/shifting but they are far to short in sight, and appear as flicker, my problem with deep
zooms is how to control that, and i need to move at a distinct zoom level and then do a straight zoom down to the point ...

to gain more control over the path you need to edit the path at different zoom levels sad

great work, thank you!

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