Playing with Fractals

Omphaloskeptic · Joined: 23 Apr 2006 Posts: 855 Location: Merimbula

I've been playing with some fractal programs (Apophysis & Ultra Fractal) recently for a change of pace, just beginning to scratch the surface.

Composition is a bit of a challenge since I don't understand how to manipulate most of the parameters. This is the first decent thing I've done, took 4-5 hours of trying this and that...

Any C & C are welcome.

Thanks for taking a look.

The Pook · Joined: 01 Feb 2007 Posts: 2904 Location: Tasmania

Hello Don, welcome back. Have you been on holidays?

I haven't played with fractal programs since my commodore Amiga days a decade or so ago, so I've forgotten what all the parameters mean by now.

KimO · Joined: 06 Feb 2007 Posts: 1470

Dont know what a fractal is but I like it Om. Cool

Omphaloskeptic · Joined: 23 Apr 2006 Posts: 855 Location: Merimbula

Thanks Pook & Kim

gggraph · Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 8:31 pm Post subject: Re - Playing with Fractals

Hi Don - cool image.

I got introduced to fractals back in the 80's sometime - I still have the edition of Scientific American with the original article on the Mandelbrot set that blew me away. I had an Apple //e at the time, and the pinnacle of my programming 'career' was writing a 6502 machine-language routine to handle the complex math iterations of the algorithm. It use to run overnight to create a 600 x 400 px mono image.

In the 90's, one of my first Macs had a fractal explorer plug in for Photoshop that would zoom in, in real time. A year later, I had one that generated Mandlebrot and Julia sets as a screen saver. Sheesh!

I haven't done anything with them in years, but they are still beautiful. Nice to see somebody else feels the same.

Cheers

Grant

The Pook · Joined: 01 Feb 2007 Posts: 2904 Location: Tasmania

Back in the 90s had some cool Commodore Amiga Mandelbrot software that did the same.

Omphaloskeptic · Joined: 23 Apr 2006 Posts: 855 Location: Merimbula

Thanks Grant, glad you liked it.

Today's PCs enable exploration of the Mandelbrot set in ways that would be unimaginable a couple of decades ago. For example, here's a small (very small) bit of the Mandelbrot 'coastline' I found that is coloured but otherwise unmodified.

When I say small I mean really small. If the main disk of the original Mandelbrot image was the size of the earth's orbit around the sun, this image would show an area about the size of the nucleus of a hydrogen atom... Note that an analogue of the original Mandelbrot image appears at the center, and the surrounding filigree is almost but not quite symmetrical.

Ultra Fractal, the fractal program that I'm currently learning, provides a variety of tools for creating fractal images that enable far greater latitude for artistic expression than just selecting the values of the formula constant and the colouring. Transformations can be used to 'distort' the image, elaborate colouring formulas can be applied, and multiple layers combined.

It's rather challenging to learn the 'medium' but fortunately there's a great deal of elegant beauty like the one above waiting to be discovered by just poking around.

Thanks for reading,

db

HappyArtist · Joined: 25 Aug 2009 Posts: 6 Location: Sydney

I had a lot to do with fractal art a long way back and it opened doors to places i regret going - Spiritual dimensions of great insight, but the insight was fools gold, don't get involved with them, addictive, misleading and destructive. mixing art and fractals is appealing I know, if your on the quest for truth open yr bible and seek the king!! peace