Flame Generators

[agsandrew]

In order to test functionality of this forum let me start a list of Flame Generators with very brief Pro and Con description. The idea is for other users to add their own input and correct my errors:

Apophysis
Pros: full-featured, well documented, extensive variation support, easily scriptable
Cons: comparatively unstable, mediocre rendering speed and quality

Apophysis 7
Pros: all of the original Apophysis strengths, fairly stable, support for some interesting 3D-ish variations
Cons: rendering speed is not impressive

Note: The limited rendering convenience and quality of the above applications can be somewhat compensated by Flam3 rendering engine – excellent external application for generating flame animations and stills. Other external rendering engines worth mentioning are: Flam4(CUDA) and Chaotica.

Fr0st
Pros: Streamlined interface and usability, fairly stable, fast (CUDA) rendering
Cons: A bit buggy, limited variations and scripting support

Fractron 9000
Pros: Amazing full-screen real-time previews (CUDA), very intuitive interface
Cons: Limited variations support, no scripting, no build-in final quality renderer

KPT Photoshop Plug-in
Pros: Part of Photoshop environment
Cons: Its extremely limited in all other respects

Gimp plug-in
Pros and cons similar to the KPT plug-in

[fractalrebel]

You might want to add XenoDream to the list of Flame Generators.

[Pharmagician]

Oxidizer (for Mac), Flam4 (for Mac) - can also be added to the list...

[fractalrebel]

Here is some more info on XenoDream:

It represents affine transforms as holons which are shown graphically as 3D rectangles that can be rotated and skewed. There are also options for different types of holon interactions relating to coloring and visibility. Coloring is complex but fairly flexible. There are a number of options for camera and lighting.
Each holon can be associated with a math tranform called metamorphs. There are a large number to choose from.

I have taken some of the holon parameters from some of the sample files and successfully used them to create affine transforms for my 3D IFS in Ultrafractal (still private at this point) and render image very close to the corresponding XD images.

I still haven't mastered the coloring interface, and the render interface I find awkward. Rendering is fairly fast, however.

[Mick]

You may be interested in the following web page that has been around for several years. It lists many flame generators, links to where they may be found, and a chart of types each is capable of:

http://www.Nahee.com/Fractals/XenoDream/Flames.html

[Keldor]

There's Fractal Architect (for mac), which is the editor my dad has been working on. It uses flam3 or flam4 as a renderer, so it's quite fast (although the GPUs on Macs are rather lacking compared to high end PCs).

Right now, I'm working on getting a real time renderer into flam4OCL, so it can be used as a backend for Fractal Architect and other software, which will add chaos and custom variations and true 3D to the mix. It's worth noting that Flam4OCL doesn't work on ATI macs due to out of date drivers. Ugh.

[chibiamy]

Okay, I'm getting access to ... a beefy machine. An HP 585 Server with 32 GB ram and 8 CPUs. It will be running Windows Server 2008 and will be my rendering machine.

What renderer is suggested for such an environment...

And who can help an idiot like me getting it working?

-chibiamy

[spot]

fr0st also does keyframe animation, which none of the others do afaik.