Topic awaiting preservation: Fractal Images

After reading a thread by Hugh not so long ago about fractals. I remembered I had a free fractal generator that I had not used for ages, (I think it was called WinCiG or something like that). After a few minutes I was bored. It is interesting but not enough interaction. Then I recalled seeing a link somewhere in the GN on this Page. In a section near the bottom the was mention of another free fractal generator called vchira. I thought I would give it a try and downloaded it.
Here is an example of a couple of vchira's fractal images I generated that I imported into PS and played 'round with in layers.
I still can't get past the feeling that I don't really have any part to play in the "art" of these images that are generated by the program, just tweaking really, but sometimes in all that tweaking, you unearth a render that appeals to you.
I find that my "artistic pout" is placated somewhat if I then use the images generated by vchira, to blend in several layers in PS.
There is also a feature in it to blend layers. (If you don't suffer from "artistic pout" heh)

Do you use/play with any fractal soltware? If so which one?
I would love to see any examples of images you have made with it.
Tao

I tried out vchira,,,


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Is This Thing On?

Bleah...

I hadn't thought of making a cutout .gif like that. I have been making them at 1024x768 to try to capture more detail (as in the first image).

:::tao:::

There are a bunch of fractals in Gimp as well. One of the fire-ish[?] tiles is a zoom of a fractal called explosion... It is like zooming in on the edge of one of the loops in the fractal that you zoomed out on.

ZOOM


UnZOOM




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Is This Thing On?

Bleah...

I don't think that's a fractal as much as it's just a tiling texture, like PS's rendered clouds.

"Nothin' like a pro-stabbin' from a pro." -Weadah

While a fractal can be used as a tiling texture, doing so does not make it a non-fractal...

Fractals in Gimp are accessed by going to Filters > Render > Patterns > Fractal Explorer. There are 9 base formulas that can be used to generate pretty much any fractal image you can imagine. The trick is to know how to adjust the parameters to get what you want. Those Paramters include both color and mathematical variable. Then within the dialogs there is another way to pick from 33 preset fractal snapshots...


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Is This Thing On?

Bleah...

I never made the assumption that tiled != fractal. I associated fractals with mathmatically drawn (recursive) patterns, which I didn't see in your fire image. You proved me wrong though, so touché.

"Nothin' like a pro-stabbin' from a pro." -Weadah

[This message has been edited by synax (edited 01-07-2004).]

I can't really see any detail in your gimp examples UnknownComic, but I think I know what you mean.
Here is another example

tao

Yeah, it was all quick and dirty low res stuff... The Butterfly thing was just a quick doodle in PS after trying out the vchira thing, the others are just demo stuff, crippledware... LOL!

I'm a filesize scrooge. My settings are set by default to low bandwidth usage.

[edit] The thing about fractals is, and take this with a grain of salt as just my opinion, they tend to be wildly variable in color and parameters available. Hours can be spent getting back to square one. An example is a preset for an 'ice crystal' which is an extreme closeup of a tiny part of a Julia fractal... without the preset I dont think I would have found an ice crystal within this fractal... There's too much chaff to sort through to get to the 'Fractal Wheat'.
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Is This Thing On?

Bleah...

[This message has been edited by UnknownComic (edited 01-08-2004).]

I have always wanted to know how those things were made! Thanks guys!

Pity this program wasn't around fifteen years ago. I actually had to use illegal narcotics to see such cool fractels.

I don't use any fractal software, but I have a kickass fractal generating screensaver.. www.sticksoftware.com for any of you people with OSX who wanna check it out..

Fractals are really cool

-Xel