Attached Link: Fractal Art FAQ

We have not had a banner, except for the white square with red x, for more than 2-3 months now. It must be a really long holiday and catch up period. It can be noted that audre could take the time to post an image today and has posted in October as well as September when we have not had the benefit of a moderator or banner in the same length of time, it would seem. Other groups seem to be maintained. It's great to take time to play and have a holiday, everyone needs to, but it's not unreasonable to expect some sort of minimum administrative upkeep from someone in the length of time this has gone on. I can't believe there hasn't been some 10-15 minute stretch of the work day when it wasn't possdible to reload the images including the abysmal emoticons, back onto the server. It's no more than many of us had to do, with our own gallery images, when Renderosity was making changes a few months ago and gallery images disappeared.

Attached Link: Fractal Art FAQ

Attached Link: http://fractals.iuta.u-bordeaux.fr/f-art-faq/

Attached Link: http://fractals.iuta.u-bordeaux.fr/f-art-faq/

To the Powers That Be.......Audre or Micheleh.... Why is there a message missing from this thread? It was posted on the 28th. When a search is done on the person's name, that posted it, it directs to this thread, but the message is missing. Usually a deleted message is shown as deleted by the author.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/freestuff.ez?Form.Contrib=fractility&Topsectionid=0

Dave, Okay, fair enough, and I agree in that I don't have time to try them all either. I have tried many of them though, and in doing so find ones that suit me regardless of popularity, suggestions or hype. Even if I could get a "be all, end all" piece of software as you suggest, I probably wouldn't use half of it because I wouldn't be interested in half of it. Plus, some individual pieces of software do individual functions, or renderings, better than some present "catch all" offerings. That's why it is important to find what you like. For me it is the same as other art work in that I am interested in a wide variety of things, with a wide variety of styles available and I would like to work in a wide variety of media, but have found it best to work in the various media that suits me best with the tools I am most comfortable with. Coming to that realization included trying a lot of different things along the way. Doing so makes the difference between success and failure and liking what you do or create. That's just what works for me. My recommendations to any beginners would have to start with: Mind-Boggling Fractals www.mbfractals.com or it's freeware limited version Mind-boggling Fractals Lite found at these two locations: www.simtel.net/pub/pd/54429.shtml www.completelyfreesoftware.com/graphics_programs3_w95.html Then, next, would be any of Stephen Ferguson's programs: http://fractals.iuta.u-bordeaux.fr/fergusonsc/ Followed by Fractal Explorer: http://www.eclectasy.com/Fractal-Explorer/ which incorporates many of the better features of Ferguson's programs more completely, 3D, Landscapes, IFS and Quats along with simple versions of popular features of Ultra Fractal in it's layering capabilities and palette control. These are listed solely for ease of use and ease in getting used to working in fractals and some of the different rendering methods. From there the field is wide open. For switch previews, Terry W. Gintz developed the best method I've seen when he adapted Zplot for Windows, and has undoubtedly continued that to present. However, once someone gets experience working around M-set locations of an equation and learning what will happen in switching to the J-set, you get pretty used to what you can expect from generalized switch window images in most current software. I agree it could be better, though.

Sorry, I wasn't aware I had violated the rules of daunting someone. I think the statement fairly well stands on it's own in that it is a good idea to be open to trying as many different programs as one would like, or would be available, because the fractal community is far more divided along political lines involving the use of one program over another and suggestions are undoubtedly subjective at best. Perhaps after trying various software the person my find that it is in their best interest to pursue the use of a program that they are comfortable with, and may in fact like to explore the endless possibilities within the framework of the "z^2+c and nothing else" equation. Just as there are those folks who like to explore Lyaopunov's Quaternerion's, IFS, Attractors and whatever els they may choose to pursue, to the exclusion of others. Also a person could try to explore the many types of fractal generators to find ones that best suit them in the event they are merely looking for a style that they are interested in using as seed images within other software or post process in a myriad of ways. Yes, fractals, graphics and the choices thereof are truly daunting. That's one reason I listed the Fractal Art FAQ so that a description of the most popular programs are given, with links to everything else. BTW, Fractint has been available for Windows for some time. It is known as Winfract, version 18.21, but it has not been updated since 1994/95 and does not have the deep zooming capability, or a host of other capabilities, that the full DOS version has.

Attached Link: http://fractals.iuta.u-bordeaux.fr/f-art-faq/

Two possible problems could be that you do not have all the latest formuals that a UPR could possibly use. Go to the UF formula database and download the entire update and unzip them. Go to JPP's resource pages and locate the links to the half dozen or so formulas that are not in the UF formula database, such as Edward Perry's or Stig Petterson's, and download them as well. There should also be a link for the orgform.zip and it would be wise to get it. If you don't see a link go to the Spanky database for Fractint and download and unzip that. That should get you completely up to date with all publicly available equations and formulas for UF. A second problem may be a simple error in cutting and pating the UPR in from the email. Just put the cursor on a word, hit "Ctrl A" to highlight the entire text(UF ignores text outside the UPR), then with the fractal image window of UF active and highlighted, NOT the properties windows, hit "Ctrl V"(or use Edit menu) to paste the UPR into the fractal image window. Sometimes UF takes a second to recognize and find all the formulas in a UPR and searches it's folders to locate them. After all an image can not only have multiple layers, but each layer can have different seed image formulas, inside and outside coloring methods as well as a transformation or two if an author has incorporated all those things. This should clear up most problems, but others more experienced may have other solutions. If that doesn't solve the problem, then it's not likely a problem with UF. If your computer hangs with any other graphics apps, then consider reducing the speed of the graphics hardware accelerator.