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Author Topic: Tools of the fractal trade  (Read 2481 times)
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JodyVL
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« on: July 04, 2011, 04:30:38 AM »

Hey guys  cheesy

So I've been wondering, since I just dived into fractals head-first and didn't come prepared... What do you guys use? There are two levels to this question... Firstly, what software do each of you consider absolute must-haves when it comes to fractals and fractal art (include favourite renderer's and why, do some serve well in some ways while other do better in other ways? etc) and what other non-fractals proggies do you use for editing, etc... Both images and videos. (ex. I have Photoshop CS5) .. And monitoring utility programs?

The second part is, what do each of you recommend as an optimum hardware configuration? I have a Core2 Duo E7500 2.93GHz cpu, and two gigs of ram. Any of you use graphics cards? I'd imagine they help immensely(?)... Any other hardware or OS tweaks that'll optimise the fractals/fractal art experience?

Hmm, yeah, that's all I wanted to know... Tag, you're it.  A Beer Cup
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Sockratease
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« Reply #1 on: July 04, 2011, 03:37:33 PM »

Firstly, what software do each of you consider absolute must-haves when it comes to fractals and fractal art (include favourite renderer's and why, do some serve well in some ways while other do better in other ways? etc) and what other non-fractals proggies do you use for editing, etc... Both images and videos. (ex. I have Photoshop CS5) .. And monitoring utility programs?

My must have Fractal Generators are Mandelbulb 3D, Chaoscope, ChaosPro, Mutatorkammer, and Xenodream. 

M3D and Chaoscope have my favorite rendering abilities, ChaosPro is great for Mandelbrot play  (though UltraFractal can do deeper zooms, I just never liked UF - something about using it just never clicked with me and it's a chore and a bother to learn when I have other tools that I enjoy playing with!), Mutatorkammer is fantastic for all sorts of things that no other program does as well like easily making seamless fractal textures, and it's the best choice for "exotic image projection" if you like distorting and otherwise playing with mixing fractals and photographs, and Xenodream is wonderful because it exports 3D obj files easily (ChaosPro also exports obj files easily) for use in my 3D Software  (I use Carrara, Bryce, Daz 3D Studio, and Blender).

Other software - besides the 3D Software above, I use VirtualDub for compiling image sequences, Pinnacle Studio for video editing, Arcsoft Photo Studio for image editing on PC  (Pixelmator on the mac), and a slew of others for making my own music for the videos (Audacity is the big player on that list), and doing odd effects  (Particle Illusion is one of my Secret Weapons for getting unusual results that make people ask how it was done).

I don't bother with any system monitoring utilities - I never got any spectacular results from them.

The second part is, what do each of you recommend as an optimum hardware configuration? I have a Core2 Duo E7500 2.93GHz cpu, and two gigs of ram. Any of you use graphics cards? I'd imagine they help immensely(?)... Any other hardware or OS tweaks that'll optimise the fractals/fractal art experience?

I just use the best I can afford.  Not usually very good computers.

Only a few programs use the GPU, and I do a lot of work on a computer with no graphics card.

The key thing to shop for is processors - LOTS of GHz and as many cores as possible.

Even RAM takes a backseat to that.

And a nice monitor makes everything more enjoyable when it comes to Fractals or any form of Computer Art.

Hope that helps.   afro
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JodyVL
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« Reply #2 on: July 04, 2011, 06:03:13 PM »

That's exactly the sort of answer I was looking for. wink Thanks Sock. A Beer Cup And how about the rest of you pioneering fractalnauts?

Ok, so I'll keep a lookout for a new CPU, though mine's not all the bad. I just get frustrated with render speeds is all. Especially since I'm still very much in the learning stage so quite often I end up rendering something that looks terrible  sad

And just look at all those new programs I can try smiley ... I notice you didn't mention Mandelbulber. Anyone had experience with it? I downloaded it but haven't installed it yet because I'm still so into M3D.
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Sockratease
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« Reply #3 on: July 04, 2011, 06:25:50 PM »

Mandelbulber was like UltraFractal to me.

MANY people LOVE it, and I see Beautiful works coming from both, but something about the interface just never "clicked" with me and I couldn't get going with it very far at all...

Totally subjective.

I want to learn both programs in more detail someday - but until then, I'll stick with the ones my brain likes better.
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DarkBeam
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« Reply #4 on: July 04, 2011, 07:01:21 PM »

Well I use; Mandelbulb, Ultrafractal, Fractal Explorer, Apophysis

I am not really able to use them at best, too hard, the hardest of all is Apo. fiery For mastering UF you need years, too, but you can get good pictures with it even with a poor knowledge. Same for Fractal Explorer, an old style program that I reccomend to you, to learn what fractals are really smiley

Good luck - Luca grin

ps. I can't use Incendia, too too hard, and I simply hate ChaosPro  angel
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David Makin
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« Reply #5 on: July 04, 2011, 07:37:45 PM »

I almost exclusively use Ultra Fractal but at the moment for 3D fractals I'd recommend Mandelbulber and Mandelbulb3D for the bulbs and boxes, Xenodream for general IFS type fractals and Chaoscope for orbital attractors.
If you want really fast rendering and have the hard-hitting video hardware to do so then I'd recommend the various GPU programs including the WebGL one here:
http://fractal.io/
But don't mess with that if your GPU is a little underpowered !

As to set up, I have a 2.66GHz dual 6-core Westmere MacPro with an ATI 5870 but I don't have enough time to use it to full advantage at the moment - I have WinXP installed on the second drive using Bootcamp.
I'd recommend that option to anyone who's prepared to pay the same price for a computer as for a small car wink

For an idea of relative speeds of different CPU-based systems for fractalling generally the UF benchmarks are an excellent reference:

http://www.shadoworld.co.uk/UF5/Benchmark/Benchmark%20results.htm
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lycium
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« Reply #6 on: July 04, 2011, 08:13:51 PM »

I only use my own programs, written from scratch in C++, to make my images. It's part of the challenge smiley

Regarding hardware for rendering, I suggest NOT spending as much as a small car on an overpriced and underpowered machine! tongue stuck out Rather buy an i7 2600k, 16GB of fast memory and a GeForce GTX 560.
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Madman
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« Reply #7 on: July 04, 2011, 08:25:11 PM »

There's an optimum in hardware and hard ca$h grin And don't worry, whatever your configuration, in the end, you'll still think it's too slow... I'm running an i5 and that's fast enough for me (for now...). Software I use: Mandelbulb 3D. I used to use Chaospro, Incendia, Apophysis, etc, but, well, for the time being M3D is taking up most of my time  embarrass. I wonder if there's a way back...
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Sfumato
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« Reply #8 on: July 15, 2011, 10:49:18 PM »

I use Quad 9650 with 16 GB DDR3 and wonder is it reasonable to increase the amount of memory since MB3D and Apo (I use them mainly), as well as UF that takes 10% of my time, are not capable to 'see' more than 4GB RAM being 32-bit (as far as I understand) applications. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Having read the benchmark results I decided that my further configuration should be based on 2 fast Xeons with the fastest memory. Unfortunatelly I can't switch to Mac as all the software should be changed as well.
Concerning GPU - neither Apo flam3 nor Chaotica use GPU for rendering so I used to think it wasn't a reasonable investment. Now I have GeForce GTS 250 video and don't know if I should get a more powerful videocard as not sure whether MB3D uses GPU resources for rendering - ?
Thank You for Your advice in advance.
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lycium
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« Reply #9 on: July 15, 2011, 11:01:25 PM »

Correct, 32bit applications on Windows are limited to either 2GB (normally) or 3GB (with some weird extension), and 4GB generally.

Chaotica will definitely support GPU acceleration in the future; this should come as no surprise as I worked on the GPU acceleration in Indigo Renderer smiley
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Lee Oliver
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« Reply #10 on: July 16, 2011, 04:49:31 AM »

Well, it seems as if enough information has been given regarding CPU requirements.  However I think XaoS is a good place to start for beginners to fractal geometry.  It does not do 3D, but it has a wide variety of preset formulas for exploration as well as an option to use your own formulas.  I always felt that it helped me to warm up to this type of math and to grasp the fundamentals.  After this it is much easier to use Mandelbulb 3D (or at least it was for me).

Also, if/when you begin using Mandelbulb 3D you may want to look for a cheap external hardrive.  I just recently got one to clear the 35 Gigabyte parameter folder from my desktop (and I'm sure people around the forum have much larger folders than that).
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Sfumato
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« Reply #11 on: July 17, 2011, 01:22:56 AM »

If I'm not mistaken there's a MB3D x64 version for Linux (i seem to come across somewhere). Does that mean that it is reasonable to use 64-bit Linux for MB3D if it runs on a rather  modern puter (say, Quad with >4GB RAM)?
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Sfumato
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« Reply #12 on: July 18, 2011, 03:50:57 PM »

I beg Your pardon, Jesse corrected me that there's no 64 bit MB3D.
Sfumato.
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