Complete beginner - how to start?

[Twoheadstalking]

I hope this is the right place to post, if not please forgive me. I've looked arounds these boards a bit and also the web but am at a complete loss as to where to start with creating fractals. I am interested in making 2 and 3D stills and videos (eg like the ones put out by teamfresh). I have plenty of background maths knowledge (undergrad level in dynamical systems and the like, phd and postdoc in numerical anaylsis) so that won't be a problem I hope.

Can anyone point me in the direction of some good, free (unfortunately no money to spend at the moment) software that can get me started? I think getting my feet dirty will be the best way to learn for such a venture.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Madman]

Hi twoheadstalking,

Welcome to the forum, there's a lot to learn here! For 2D fractals, Chaospro is a nice (free) starter. You'll need to spend some time to get the feel of the program, though, since it's not completely intuitive. For 3D fractals, the free stuff can be found on this forum . You can download Mandelbulber from Buddhi here and also Mandelbulb 3D from Jesse. I'll leave it to you to decide which one yoyu like best.

Good luck, have fun and show us some of your creations soon!

Regards,

Marco

[panzerboy]

ChaosPro sucks for mandelbrots. It doesnt go deep and you cant save 'the iterations' at all.
If you change the colour mapping, it RECALCULATES! why? Save the dam iterations.
In fractal extreme at 1680x1050 4x antialiased (16 pixels calced to every one on screen) it takes
maybe 2 seconds to respond from a palette change. Chaospro takes 52 seconds on a 640x48o 3x AA
picture to RECALCULATE because I changed the palette.

A great tool for people with inifinite time on their hands.

Apart from that yeah ChaosPro looks great, it has many of the features of an older program UltraFractal
but has the advantage thats its not crippleware, unless the never saving the iterations is a crippleware feature?

[David Makin]

Apart from that yeah ChaosPro looks great, it has many of the features of an older program UltraFractal

Don't be fooled by the phrase "older program UltraFractal", Ultra Fractal is indeed "older" than ChaosPro in the sense that the earliest version appeared years before ChaosPro *but* in terms of both fractal programming and potential for the creation of Fractal Art Ultra Fractal is more sophisticated and more stable than ChaosPro.
ChaosPro does have an advantage for 3D at the moment however since I think it has a "native" 3D mode, something not yet available in UF.

The best (free) programs to start with for fractals (generally) (on Windows) are the Windows version of Fractint, Fractal Explorer, Fractal Extreme, ChaosPro, Apophysis and Chaoscope.

If you're even slighty serious (especially about the more technical side such as writing your own formulas/colourings etc.) then the only free progam relevant is ChaosPro (I discount Fractint as it still needs a lot of work to catch up in this regard) *but* I cannot recommend Utra Fractal strongly enough and also Fractal Science Kit looks pretty good (though I haven't tried it seriously) also if you want 3D IFS then Xenodream is a must (though has a pretty steep learning curve).

Obviously for the new 3D Mandelbulb/box etc. the fastest renderers are those you've probably already come across - Mandelbulber and Mandelbulb 3D and (GPU)Boxplorer.
There's also my own formula for these for UF and although that's somewhat slower in rendering and slightly less sophisticated in the lighting effects it does have more extensive options as regards colouring algorithms (in fact you can essentialy use *any* 2D colouring formula from the available UF colourings as a 3D colouring for your Mandlbulb/box) plus of course it being in UF you have the layering advantages plus render to disk with fairly sophisticated animation control for video rendering if you have the animation version of UF.

[cKleinhuis]

do you want to "program" your fractal images by hand ? or do you want to learn the math behind the formulas ?
or do you just want to create art ?

for the first i would suggest you get started in implementing the iteration loop for the mandelbrot using complex numbers,
and color via escape time

for the second i would really really point you to "ultrafractal" it has a "free" mode, the only thing it disables is rendering
of images to disc, but everything else is there, and uf has a very sophisticated formula system, where you can easily
write your own formulas using a built in complex numbers interpreter/parser ( the formulas get compiled to assembly code internally )
but you can write z=z^2+c in your formulas to implement the mandelbrot formula

and for the latter you would just need a nice program, and again i think in concerns of usability and user-friendlieness it is
ultrafractal which comes with the most coolest features, e.g. coloring algorithms, layering and alpha channels
for creating 3d stuff i have to point you also to "mandelbulber" and "mandelbulb3d" both programs are developed actively by
members of this forum, and the implement really really good rendering algorithms for doing global illuminating things or depth focus ...

[bib]

My recommandations would be Ultrafractal (the test version), Mandelbulb3D, and you should also try other programs like Apophysis, Fractal Extreme, why not Incendia...
You will make your own opinion after you have tested quite a few of them.
ChaosPro is a clone of Ultrafractal, with some additional functionnalities, but unfortunately much less stable than the original. To me, Ultrafractal is still THE reference in terms of user-friendliness and flexibility.

[cKleinhuis]

ultrafractal is also a great resource for formula references!

[Twoheadstalking]

Thanks for all the replies, and so quickly too, lots for me to look into here. I see a lot of you suggest ultra fractal and I have a quick quesiton about it - after the 30 day free trial expires can you still use it (but with limited functionality), or do you need to purchase a license for any use?

[bib]

You can still use it after the 30 days. Except if it has changed recently, the free version comes with all functionalities and access to the formula database, which is a great source to learn at your own pace. The only thing is that renders will be watermarked.

[David Makin]

If I'd remembered I would have mentionerd Incendia too - it's just that I don't actually use it personally.