My Fractal Journey 2014

I guess it's alittle late for the DA event, but I'm going to write anyways because it's exciting.

Ive created some awesome fractals in the past few months. The sad part is that I haven't been able to render them. I don't want my computer to be burned out while I'm in the middle of a big project, which means no overnight fractal rendering. That said, this article is not going to have all that many images except from my already existing gallery.

My fractal journey began in 2009 when I discovered Apophysis 2, but not much happened until I 2013 when I discovered JWildfire, my now preferred software. Even then, I struggled to figure things out, and most of what I had was fractal manipulations. And then 2014 came around, and by then, I had a drive to figure it out. I studied JWildfire code carefully to figure out the algorithm to see how everything worked and how the points magically got on the screen. To this day, I still find in rather ironic that many awesome fractal artists I know have no idea what's going on "under the hood". To them, it's still a kind of magic.

When I started out, the best I could do was fiddle with the knobs and numbers and hope something came out right. Sometimes I could get something nice.

Experimenting definitely helped...

Part of the problem initially was that I had xaos backwards. After studying the code carefully, I managed to correct that, and things came out nicer.
My best stuff up to that point was still goofing off more or less, usually an accident. But more experimentation taught me two things: linear, post_crop, and mobius. The key fractals at this point were "Tasting Orange" and "Mobius Flower".
Ultimately, the amounted to "Out and In" and "Keep in Simple" (supposed to be "Keep it Simple", except for a typo)

I was ecstatic to see "Out and In" come out. For once, I had a cool, full-screen fractal with no overlapping parts. For once, I understood (at least somewhat), how it was made. By this point, it was March, I was already beginning to modify the engine. I guess March could be considered the turning point when I started to get a handle on how things worked. I was still, however, a long ways from understanding how other fractal artists managed to make the cool things that they did.

Also during this time (February), I created an exporter for Povray, which allowed me to see some cool 3D creations, and perhaps inspired me for future work, but I'll talk about that in a bit.

In the meantime, I saw artists like xzendor7 and wanted to give his style of art a try.

The next step was reached with studying other people's work. I learned about julia patterns, but trying to make my own was... uh... rough ( fav.me/d7dymp0 ) until I discovered the grand julian tutorial from Jimpan1973 . I also learned about lighting techniques from the tutorial. That's one amazing fractal and one very helpful chunk of information. I've since toyed with the techniques, and I can now build my own julian flames from scratch.

Along the way, I learned about the importance of borders and moving components around. Another checkpoint along the way was my implementation of Murl in Java for JWildfire.
Notably, I learned (EDIT: from tatasz . However, studying SuicideBySafetyPin helped me learn elliptic usage) that murl can be used as a final just as well as regular transform. I still think murl is underused, but getting something out of it requires either patience and messing around or understanding its how it "modifies space".

April came, and I was designing from scratch. By the time June rolled around, I had learned the famous spherical pattern and was trying to nest it cleanly.
Even then, cleaning was still somewhat experimentally testing where the source of the problem was, but I wasn't totally clueless either.

By July, I had a good handle on what I was doing, I was discovering new patterns and making tutorials.

Into August, I was producing many fractal flames, but my work became relatively secretive as much as it did experimental. I was ecstatic when I designed "Sunlits" (still a secret), the first fractal flame that really made me feel "pro" at fractal design.
In short notice, I had too many fractals to render in a night. Even still, I showed some hints of my experimenting. In November (and probably October), I had spent quite a bit of time experimenting with the so-called "glitch-style". I also learned how to do curls with spherical.
Notably, some of my more valued fractal flames managed to slip out to please my followers:

Even those, ironically, were just the beginning, and it seems like ages ago in my fractal journey. I learned in leaps and bounds thereafter, experimenting with DOF, blurs, elliptic, custom transforms, complex nested patterns, borders, coloring techniques, and so forth.
Sometimes I'd try weird experiments to see what was possible:

From August to December, I was averaging over 100 flame files (anywhere between 25-75% of them each month could be called "completed" flames, not merely interesting components). The point being, I was creating, and creating a TON - more than I could keep up with in renders.

The other reason for not rendering as much was a project I had picked up work on after having dreamed about it (and somewhat started) as far back as April: MetalIFS.


I can't remember when I first discovered Mandelbulb3D, but I haven't done as much exploring with it as I should. For that reason, I don't usually come across fractals of interest with it. However, I did learn this year about good techniques for using it, including being careful with parameters, how to stack parameters, and, maybe the most important for understanding the program: what the "alternate" option tab means. The most I could make with it for a long time was manipulations (e.g. fav.me/d6xa3sl ).

I liked the idea of creating my own fractal software, so I created a variety of programs both for 2D and 3D fractals or fractal-esque structures. While I only managed to get a few pictures and a bunch of unfinished projects, what I learned from those projects was invaluable in helping me find out what I really wanted. Even using Blender turned out to be painfully slow.

In February, I created a flame-to-Povray-scene exporter for JWildfire. It allowed me to see fractal flames in 3D for the first time.

Unfortunately, the results weren't as I had desired, so in April, I decided to start a project called MetalIFS. Before I began, however, I designed it carefully and tested out the concept to ensure it worked. Building and testing the concept started in August and went through October, and I began with the GUI in November. Three months later... (that means this month...)

Funny - the results of the rendering look rather tacky in comparison to the GUI interface. XD But that aside... It's another big milestone in my fractal journey.

During the year, I managed to write various articles on fractal art and software. I celebrated the 1st anniversary of The-FractalBest . Since September, however, my participation in the fractal community began to slow, and it really waned in December, despite all of the plans I had.
On my to-do list is:
> A database of images for what you can do with fractal transforms. Someone on the JWF forums eventually started one, although I have some ideas that would help (and I plan on keeping it outside of facebook).
> Finishing MetalIFS.
> Trying out more patterns-within-patterns to see what I can get.
> Balancing my weights to get richer colors.
> Trying out more light-play, even if sacrificing appearance. I have a hunch I can get some really cool fractals by focusing points, using rays, and utilizing blurs to get some cool, semi-realistic light play. I often see thargor6 's works and recognize both their beauty and simplicity.
> Putting more effort into individual flames. I tend to quickly try out ideas and shapes and I do quite a bit of exploring, but that said, many of these explorations don't have all the richness or nice features I enjoy; many times, these exploration flames need a significant level of balancing. It makes for nice patterns, but I see a ton of relatively simple fractals out there that use thick borders and nested patters and look great. I tried doing it once and loved the result, so hopefully I'll have more time to spend on that.
> Space fractals. I have seen fractals used for outerspace scenes and yet, inasmuch as I did one cool manipulation for outerspace, I'd like to try some more, especially raw fractals.

Here's hoping for a grand 2015!