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I just found this site last week...after I downloaded Fractal Extreme and Ultra Fractal 5...as I was looking for some clues concerning smoothing and such. My background is in design, was originally a high school teacher, later studied CVI (as it was called in those days) and weaned my chops on 3D Studio (dos)...mind you, this is back in the days before Photoshop even existed! Then worked in the corporate world for most of a decade in the in-house video and animation department at Autodesk, as a 3D artist/animator. The company paid for a great many week long trips of drinking and debauchery at Siggraph over my corporate career...oh yes, those pioneer days of computer animation were wonderful indeed!

These days I like doing art and design for fun. For the last few years I've creating a great many "pattern designs", an artistic area that I seem to have a real knack for, and printing them to canvas on my Epson 9900. I also enjoy making the stretcher bars/frames in my shop...and rolling on the veneer coatings (Glamour 2) before the stretching and framing.

I hadn't played around with fractal programs in a great many years, and last week when I took a test drive with Fractal Extreme, I was really impressed!...of course the color picker and gradient functionality really sucks...and that's what led me to Ultra Fractal 5, where creating your color schemes is a breeze...except, darn it all, the animation and timeline functionality is almost useless. I haven't tried to make a deep zoom yet with UF... does it render "key fractals" like Fractal Extreme does...and then interpolate between them? The help file doesn't seem to mention that...?

I'd sure like to get some advice on the best smoothing algorithms for the fractals like burning ship...I tried the "general" one that I read about in one thread here, but it really seems to overpower the delicate nature of the interesting parts of the fractal.

Nice to meet you all!
STUart

my first deep zoom in FE:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/8cVFA3yfOyQ&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/8cVFA3yfOyQ&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1</a>

a few initial renderings:











  

Greetings, and welcome to this particular forum !!!    

Enjoyed your recent video and images.  Back in the time, what fractal programs did you once use??

BTW, I was never able to get the name correct, is that  Stuart Bradford  or  Bradford Stuart ??
 

Thanks Nahee! it's been about 10-12 years since I looked at a fractal program, so can't recall...but it was very simplistic and slow, if I'm remembering right. Wow, it's a whole new world now with all of the collaborative efforts!...Stuart is the last name  

Yeah...I was thinking back this morning about 286 PC's and those super high resolution 1024x756 13" monitors!
Ha ha, it's all relative since if you're using the "latest technology available," then you're happy

...a few more pics for your enjoyment

...the first one I call "the fractal chicken!" (rendered using the illustrate plugin in 3dsmax)









and a pattern that I drew on my cintiq....(find the kneeling woman in the image...look sideways!)