Hello fractal people! S I have been playing with Ultra Fractal 3 and Apophysis for only a short time now, though I've been lurking at renderosity for quite a while, learning from the forums. I've posted a few of my results that I liked in my gallery here.

renderix was kind enough to leave a comment about my recently uploaded "Sea Creature" fractal suggesting that I "render higher" for better results. I assume he meant that I should render at a higher resolution?

I tried that in UF, bumping the render res to 600 instead of the default and didn't see any significant difference in the renders. I did one as a png, and one as a jpg, which I understand is not desirable. The strange thing was that when I opened both of the supposedly 600 res ones in photoshop to compare, the image info said they were both at 72 resolution.

I made the fractal over a month ago, and it's likely that whatever I did between the two proggies is to blame for the grainy-ness of the image, though I think it looks sort of like it was done in pastels and I'm not all that upset with it.

I'd like to learn from you experts though. Any advice will be most welcome. Thanks!

Zoe

Message edited on: 05/24/2005 22:32

If youre using apo to render, try increasing the quality setting to 1000 and the filter radius to 0.3 and oversample to 1.You'll see quite a difference.What it does is decrease the amount of pixels that show through as background.In other words, it solidifies your flames.When you use UF to layer your flames, set the Iteration density higher in the outside tab of the flame fractal coloring.

Message edited on: 05/25/2005 04:54

i think what is meant by higher resolution is actually higher oversampling, it is a method of creating anti-aliasing by (during the rendering process)rendering the picture larger then downsizing it to get smoother edges, so yes, you would end up with a picture with the same dpi as another set to the same resolution in the end. for web graphics i find 200 to 400 more than enough - you won't see any differneunless youzoom in uper close an, to high an oversample and you lose definition. i've just looked at your picture, i don't use uf so i don't know how that works but it looks like you imported a flame on a transparent background into uf and composited it there without any manipulation of the flame? personally i don't think a higher resolution would make that much difference to that flame, what you would get instead of the black pixel area is that area being more dense and grey. is it possible to select by colour (select all the black/grey bits) and delete/cut them in ultra fractal ? i would do that until i have nothing but the coloured part of the flame and then to intensify that flame layer it several times. that is a lot of postwork though and ideally you want to render flames which don't need that much work, probably the best way of doing that if you intend to xport the flame is to tweak (move the triangles) the flame on a light coloured background in apo, that way you can see all the background noise and minimise it before rendering.

another thought, i suspect ultra fractal dosn't do a lot of things you might need when compositing images which at some point you will want to do, don't buy photoshop for gawd knows how many hundreds of dollars, get gimp which is free, does more or less the same stuff and they have a pretty good support network http://www.gimp.org/

Yes, sammi, I did import the flame into UF on a transparent background. Then, from what I remember, I duplicated the flame several times on different layers and manipulated each for the final effect. You can select by color in UF but it's a lot more difficult than in photoshop, which I've got - an old 6 which I am happy with as I can't see anything in the current expensive upgrade that I can't live without. Thank you all for your help! I'll try your suggestions and let you know how things turn out.

Zoe, The flame that you imported into UF would probably have been a little less grainy if you turned off antialiasing before rendering in UF - the antialiasing in UF tends to make the flames a little "washed out"... Alternately, you could have rendered the Apophysis flame using the Apophysis program. If you use "Export Flame" and save as a .png file, it will give you a nice transparent background - which is perfect for bringing the image into PhotoShop or Paint Shop Pro to layer over another image that you might like to use for a background. Mind you - I love your image - very nice work! T.