New Fractal HAM Anims
22 messages in this thread
New version of FractalPro due out soon with some nifty new stuff: real
'tweening' between any two mandelbrot or 'cube' mandelbrot or julia or
'cube' julia set pics. also 'julia cascades' which are the sequence of
julia sets between two mandelbrot set pics. nifty animations! also added
4 diagonal directions of motion to animation sequencing (still has up,
down, left, right, zoom in, and zoom out) and 4 different increments of
motion rather than 2. Overscan of 384×480 included an d PAL versions will
be available from the get go. also integrated animation sequencing and
'static' still pic zooms into one program. still the most beautiful
fractal pics on amiga with 256 color fringe and streak-free HAM. Your
comments invited. Due out January 1, 1991. Sample Julia set cascade anim
(49 frames) available for $5 + $1 postage if you want to see how it looks.
requires 1 meg. the program doesn't, just the sample anim. program runs
in 512K fine. still has automatic sensing and support for accelerated
amigas. contact MegageM at 1903 Adria Santa Maria, CA 93454 805-349-1104
The FractalPro animations with tweening and cascades are virtually
identical to those seen on commercial videotapes done on Crays at Cornell
University Supercomputing Center. Do it yourself on the Amiga!
SuperFractals for Amiga!
Daniel,
one missing feature stands out: 24-bit support. When computing
fractals, the actual color plotting is, after making millions of
calculations, a trivial effort. With all those 24-bit, 18-bit ad
pseudo-24-bit 🙂 boards gaining popularity, shouldn't you add an option to
save in standard 24-bit IFF? Some users would be verrry grateful.
Blaq!
24 bit boards are few and far between. i may add 24-bit support, but
consider the math: there is no need to calculate to 24-bits worth of
iterations (it would take years) and (from experimental experience)
extremely few Mandelbrot pics take more than calculating to an iteration
level in excess of 1000. There are commercial programs (I recommend Art
Department) for those very very few users with 24-bit boards which will
convert standard HAM to 24-bit. I use a special way of exploiting HAM so
you get no color streaking and get up to 256 colors. The program does have
iteration levels up to 4096, but i've found only a pictures at trillions of
magnification require them and those pics already take 4 – 12 hours on an
accelerated amiga. Actually running iteration counts to 24 bits worth is
blatant mathematical overkill and no one would tolerate the delay. A
couple of users out of many many total users have asked about 24-bit color
– perhaps in the next version when 24-bit boards are more common. Plotting
in HAM is actually NOT trivial – else you'd see all the PD fractal programs
do it. FractalPro is completely unique among Amiga fractal programs in
doing HAM and the pics are worth it. This version concentrates on some
spectacular animation modes not found on any other fractal program in the
pc arena, nor even on the Cray programs used for the commercial Art Matrix
video tapes. I hope everyone will like it. Are you a current FractalPro
user? I've wanted Mandelbrot animations since I saw the first Art Matrix
video, Nothing but Zooms – so I did it for the Amiga. Then their new video
also showed Julia Cascades – now FractalPro has it and the panning and
tweening modes are completely unique to FractalPro. thanks for the input –
if there's plenty of demand for 24-bit, then that's next. Have to start
studying that 24-bit IFF standard, I guess, if that's what people want.
As a owner of a HAM-E setup, which will probably be more common than stuff
like the Firecracker, I'd like to see more software support it. Check with
Ben Williams of Black Belt Software on how to program for the thing. I
really like FractalPro, but HAM fringing has it's limits.
Douglas Bullard 71330,214
thanks, doug. i do have the info on HAM-E. don't know what it can do to
improve 256-color fractals, though. the math makes it pretty hard to get
more than 256-colrs in any mandelbrot ppic that can be calculated in any
reasonable time on an amiga. it is the math, not fractalpro, that is the
limiting issue. counting up to 50 or 100,000 iterations is a. impractical
b. not necessary at mags less than 10 trillion. there are a very few pics
i've seen (at huge mags) which could use 500 randomly accessible colors –
very few. do i have your reg card on fractalpro? used to be i knew all
tthe users by name from their reg cards but that's become impossible as the
program has greatly increased in popularity. do you actually notice any
significant ham friminging in FPro? thanks for the input. am not opposed
irrationally to supporting additional colors – simply addressing the most
asked for features first and possibly waiting for the market to tell me
that HAM-E andand DCTV and Firecracker boards are out there i numbers and
intersecting with the FractalPro community. have been asking for similar
input from others interested in more color flexibility in FPro. thanks.
16-bit color would correspond to iteration counts up to 65536 on mandelbrot
sets – see what i mean? 24-bit color would mean …. whoah!
What I have been impressed with are some images which show less banded
mandelbrot sets, and more smooth transitions from one color to another.
Perhaps I haven't played around with fractalpro to figure out how to do
that…I've seen some images done with Fractint which are just incredible.
Again, maybe I just haven't figured out how to do that yet.
not familiar with fractint – is it amiga HAM? are you registered FractalPro
owner? thanks.
Daniel – one of the 24 bit gfx issues is that while you may not be
computing more than 256 colors, you can specify those colors to be changing
in *very* smooth ways. So there is no major computer overhead, yet the end
result is far more esthetically pleasing. My suggestion is that you
generate your MSet output in 8 bit IFF files. This allows you to specify
256 24 bit colors, obtain the (small) advantage of the weak RLL compression
IFF supports, and be compatible with The Art Department, the HAM-E, and
probably a lot more.
It's a thought.
thanks, ben – the most intelligent suggestion yet, though still think AD or
T24 does the same job just fine – and even more flexible. seems you
realize there really aren't 24 bits worth of color to be had in these pics.
possibility arises of outputting the raw point value data rather than only
pic files (IFF).
Yes – we can read raw 8 bit files too, but I think 8 bit IFF will match
your softwares capabilities and what the users want to do with them.
Do you remember me? We had dinner in Disnyland. :^)
of course, ben, and you folks got one of the first NeuroPros, too. hope you
have had a chance to poke a round it a little and had some fun with
n-networks. i have the commodore docs on basic IFF stuff, but am not
familiar with the 8-bit IFF spec or 24-bit IFF spec. if you can forward it
i am interested in doing something so users can get the most out of the new
coloring boxes out there for amiga, with FPro, that is. something to put
into version 5.0.
Fractint is an absoutely fantastic fractal program done by the Stone Soup
Software Group (know the story?) for, unfortunately, the IBM. It supports
super VGA, etc. It will do mandelbrots and about fourty other types of
fractals. Check it out if you have acess to a PC, it'll give you some
ideas.
Yep, I'm a registered owner. You may remember me, I bought a copy from
Creative Computers and was missing one of the disks. I phoned you and
mailed you the disk, and you very promptly mailed me the full set.
Appreciate that, by the way.
sorry to have mis-remembered, as i said it has gotten difficult to know
everyone at this point. thanks for the comments. thought i'd heard of
fractint for ibm (but not for Amiga). does it do more than 256 colors (is
that what super VGA means?). how about pic res and speed of fractint
(always interested in such). can fractint mag to 100-200 trillion? or does
it use doubleprecision floating point? have no access to PC, but am
interested in price and compatibility of fractint. thanks.
VGA, super or not, 256 colors at once is the maximum.
256 color fractals on IBM? at what res? randomly selectable colors at
each point? thanks. FPro does 256 colors on up to 368×480 using Amiga's
HAM so not all possible of the available 4096 colors can be adjacent
neighbors. the video results with FPro are quite nice, as are the
photographic reproductions. FPro on the Amiga has the most color
flexibility and # of colors of Amiga fractal programs – and without the
usual expected HAM streak craziness – nice and smooth.
Still limited to 256 colors, but has the ability to go to 1070 x 780 or so.
It _is_ quite a bit slower, but it is a freebie and so I can't complain.
It has an interesting method of generating fractals by tracing the edge of
the color boundries and then filling in the resulting enclosed area.
Unfortunatley (not for you) it is not available on the Amiga, so it's for
the IBM types.
thanks, doug – by the way i looked you up and now remember sending the
automag disk. you're definitely in the list! i've seen a boundary
scanning method on the Amiga (i think it's called TurboMandel) and it looks
fast, but when compared to HAMandel was definitely slower (apples to apples
comparison). Fairly fast method for pics with big black areas but falls
down fast in deep mags without much black – even then has trouble with
accurate rendering unless set for max accuracy which slows it down
substantially. interesting IBM prog I suppose, FractalPro could probably
also go to super bitmaps (bigger than 320×400) but what a wait – and
automag already can pan over any range you like. thanks.
Daniel,
when I suggested 24-bit support, it wasn't for straight Mandels but
for some of the derived forms, like the "potential mountains" where the
24-bit data format would do wonders on the slopes' shading. Things like
that.
Blaq!
have decided definitely to make the new overscan size compatible with Art
Department. AD easily converts 6 bit plane HAM (like FPro images) to
24-bit plane which can be saved out. Am studying more about AD to learn if
it saves the 24-bit data as 24-bit IFF standard. don't want to reinvent
wheels, but do want to address the 24-bit issue. have had valuable input
from a few users. don't have your reg card for FractalPro – please send it.
<chuckle> I can't send in my registration card because I don't have
Fractal Pro. Hell, I don't even have an Amiga yet! B^D As far as 24-bit
goes, a HAM picture converted to 24-bit most definitely doesn't compare to
a real 24-bit picture, though Art Department's dithering routines make that
difference slimmer.
Wow! FractalPro sounds pretty exciting. Do you distribute to retail?
Regarding 24-bit output. This could be useful even at lower degress of
calculation precision. Certain algorithms like the continuous potential
method produce continuous, instead of "terraced" altitude changes and
benefit from many colors. If you include such algorithms 24-bit support
would free you from many HAM constraints.
BTW, do you hang out in COMART forum? Those FRACTINT guys have all sorts
of nifty tricks up their sleeve. — Art
i do distribute to retail, sell direct, and through distributor: American
Software Distributors (largest Amiga software distributor). they also carry
my CellPro cellular automata art/animation program and maybe will carry new
bar code printing and neural network programs (BarPro/A and NeuroPro).
maybe will make some way of using the full 4096 'count' potential of FPro
available to 24-bit fanciers. that's only 12 bit planes, but higher count
values result in nothing more than longer wait times for pics. general
purpose 24-bit fractal software may be worth writing, but not 'til more
24-bit equipment is out there. it does get around HAM but FPro is really
aimed at a broad market of amiga owners, 99.999% of whom have no such
equipment and for whom 256-color fractals is a great leap forward in image
quality. any regular fractal program could do 24-bit color, FPro's claim to
superiority is its unique ability to do better than 16 or 32 colors on
Amiga without any costly add-ons. for use with continuous potential method
programs would require storing the 'raw data' which any program for Msets
can generate. the professional commercial videotapes of mandelbrot zooms
and related stuff, done on crays, is all 256 colors. the amiga stuff made
with FPro is virtually indistinguishable from that commercial stuff made
with crays. interesting comments on 24-bit methods, but (without sounding
too self-flattering) doesn't reflect an understanding of the mathematical
behavior of the MSet. There just aren't more than 256 colors in 99.999999%
of Mset pics. A few could benefit from 512 colors and they take many hours
on an accelerated amiga. 24-bit color implies count values up to 16 million
– completely ludicrous: a. if you encounter a 'black' area you'll wait
years b. if not in a 'black' area you won't need count values beyond 2000
to 4000 except at mags in excess of 1 trillion. haven't been in comart yet,
but will take a peak. thanks.