I got email from him 1 week ago (he's one of my beta testers) and I miss seeing his beautiful art too.

Congratulations, very well deserved.

Ouch, Merren, that is a long time! I had pleurisy once, with every breath painful and sometimes even heartbeats hurt, but it was mostly gone after a week or two of rest and medication. I hope you have a faster recovery.

Interesting that UF, FE and XD are all made with Delphi. One of the guidelines for developers is to avoid using 3rd party components that don't come with source code, if you want forward compatibility.

Another beautiful collection!

Thanks for your great work each week.

Hi Keith,

overall I don't think XD is losing business to Apophysis. There will be some who are satisfied with just Apo, short or medium term, who might otherwise have tried other programs. The increasing popularity also brings people in who will likely want to use XD or UF later. The competition is at the cool toy level, and to that extent includes other kinds of cool toys.

At heart, UF, XD and Apo use three different approaches. UF is built on per pixel iteration and formula compiling, with the flame algorithm bolted on. Apo is built on the flame algorithm, which is essentially a 2D coloring method. XD is built on 3D iteration projected to 2D. While the users see some crossover, the fundamental model differences are likely to prevent any two from converging too much. XD could implement flame rendering (because sometimes it works better than simple transparent rendering) but there are many higher priorities, all more concerned with 3D.

In the longer term I think it depends more on Frederick's vision for UF and my vision for XD in terms of what we want to achieve, and how that translates into demand and opportunity.

Garth

Ulli, it's not the program development that gets paralysed, but the issues of documentation, bugs, beta testing, delivery and notification that make it more complicated than for open source freeware.

Every update of XD has been free so far and the next one will be too. It's just the time between them that's not ideal. If you emailed me your wishlists many of them might be implemented by now, and some probably already are. It's too late now for significant features for v1.6, but minor improvements are still possible while I finish writing a user guide. If you really want to see suggestions implemented on an ongoing basis, becoming a tester is an option.

Regards, Garth

I would be surprised if Apophysis implements 3D transforms any time soon, so you won't be able to make stereo images with depth. You need to use one of the programs that does 3D IFS fractals, such as XenoDream or Chaoscope. Regards, Garth

Most deserved; congratulations! Garth & Virginia

Very interesting effect; I've never seen terrains done quite like that. Thanks! Garth.

Hi Phil, well done! There are two different gradient editors, one of which has a Gain control. I recommend trying to do some tutorials exactly first, then experimenting a little at a time so you can learn what controls do. At present it can only hold the parameters of one object at a time (besides putting them in memory spots), and render one at a time, so I've been putting off saving multiple objects in one file until I have a better plan for it. Future capabilities will be improved. Regards, Garth

Hi Phil, Holon 2 should not have either Inherit Color checked, or Map From set to Inherit All (it should have stayed Last Metamorph). That's why there's no pattern showing up. The other two holons inherit their pattern and colors from holon 2. Regards, Garth

Hi Phil, XenoDream lets you interactively create a huge variety of 3D shapes, that may include fractal structures. You can export them as meshes in OBJ format. At present the coloring and material effects are not able to be exported with the mesh. XD can do flames, with more variety of shapes than other programs, but it's a different rendering method and sometimes the coloring and pseudo-texture doesn't look as good as the others. Regards, Garth

Tim, in the XD Help, Getting Started section, FAQ question 3.03 should get you started. You create a heightfield from the picture, which is used for lighting. XD doesn't import from the clipboard so you have to open a JPG, BMP or PSD file. Regards, Garth

IM*O (insert adjective of choice), mainstream fractal art will be an oxymoron for a while yet. First, for most people fractal is synonymous with psychedelic Mandy, or at least something highly mathematical looking. Others just don't care about fractals, and calling it fractal art is counterproductive. The bottom line is that art has to succeed in its aesthetic qualities as appreciated by the viewer. Fractals have to move out of the realm of 'qualifier' and into the realm of technique; when they can be ignored they will be accepted. Consider fractals as part of a toolbox, a means to an end; let the art speak for itself and it stands more chance, to the extent that it's any good. In summary, for 'fractal art' to become more mainstream it has to lose the label. Let it be subsumed into abstract, surrealism, impressionism or whatever, rather than the other way around. Regards, Garth.