Here's a link to a tutorial I wrote that, in part, goes into how to use the "Switch Mode" function in the top toolbar of the UF workspace to find spirals - or other nifty things you might see. The tutorial is in the top right corner.
http://backroom.renderosity.com/%7Efractal/CommunityPage/Links-FracTutorials.htm

Basically what you do is click the "Switch Mode" icon and then move your cursor around within the fractal window you have open. As you move it around, you'll see at the right that the "Fractal Mode" window now has a picture of your fractal in it. Watch the picture as you move your cursor and, when you see a neat spiral or shape, left click and a new fratal window will open identical to the spiral you saw in the Fractal Mode window. And that's all there is to it! It's best to select a basic Outside coloring (ucl) like Orbit Traps (use "point" trap mode) in the Standard.ucl folder or maybe Toby's Doodads II in the tma.ucl folder first so you can see shapes better. Make yourself a simple, one bar gradient of maybe white or another color you like so it isn't so "busy" that you can't see anything definite because of all the "noise" and maybe set the Outside "Transfer Function" to something "small" like "sqrt" (square root).

LOL - you won't find many spirals in my gallery, especially the early pages because I didn't know this "trick" and had to resort to writing down the Re/Im "locations" from other people's spirals and then trying them all out on different formulas to see if I could get a spiral or just entering numbers in those general ranges. Needless to say, it RARELY worked! lol No joke - I thought these folks were either math whizzes or maybe it was because they wrote the formulas and knew intimately what numbers to use to get a fractal to "spiral up". LOL So finally in '04, Panny Brawley tipped me off. Boy was I embarrassed that I didn't know how to do it or even what it was! I reckon it would have helped if I'd read the manual even a LITTLE but you know how us guys are, eh? lol. Still haven't read more than 5 pages of it - I keep getting sidetracked looking at the pictures - lol Good luck spiralling!

Rick

Message edited on: 03/22/2006 21:04