Ultrafractal 5.01 - edit: now 719 Layers in 40 Groups (ouch!) I recently got back into messing around with fbm Popcorn Traps and added the Perlin Noise 3d mapping and, well, to say I got inspired would be putting it mildly! lol This piece is an absolute horse - approx 553 layers (edit 9/6 - 719 layers) and 3+ solid weeks worth of sweat because fPT's is just so hard to make masks with. I have a series of these coming - at least 2 more as soon as I think they are "done" enough. Man, this one really taxed my rig. (3GHz Q9650 quad-core, 4Gb RAM) As a matter of fact, I lost the entire staircase and walkway last night (8+ hours of work) when I decided to start a render to wallpaper size BEFORE saving the parameters. UF5 popped up its ALL TOO FAMILIAR error window and just hung for over 5 minutes with an hourglass, so I had to shut the program down by killing the process in Task Manager. The darn thing was using 1.2Gb of RAM. Luckily, at least the render picked back up when I restarted UF so at least I got a picture of the finished piece. UF5 has a really bad habit of not letting go of RAM used by a fractal window when you close it. I'm now having to remember how I did stuff and have to recreate all those layers again - hope I can pull it off. To say I was ticked off wouldn't do my mood at 2:30 AM last night justice. I hope they fix/improve this problem in the next version - heck, Daniele Lupo did a 400+ layer recreation of "Archimboldo" a few years back on a 500 MHz single core and....UF THREE. Anyhow, sorry for the rant - been a real drain trying to put this together. Hope y'all enjoy it! Thanks for stopping by here at the top of the world where eagles fly! lol Rick Edited 9/6/09: Rebuilt the staircase after UF hosed me and upped a fixed version - Now it's a bridge! lol The playing resulted in a good deal more layers because I also made some other changes to colors on the "chapel" atop the tall spire and I added more stairs. Final Layer and Group tally - 719 Layers in 40 Groups. Wow - I think that is a record for UF! I also think I miscounted previously when I said "approx 533" since, though I added a lot of layers, it certainly wasn't 170-ish...more like 50ish. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ***(Fine art giclee' prints of most of my work are available in limited edition on archival paper or canvas - e-mail: drahcir3@hotmail.com and get busy filling that empty spot on the wall! Unique, "one-of-a-kind" (edition size = 1) prints and embellished prints are also available*** :-) ***This image is solely the copyright of Richard B. Spix III and is in no way to be considered "public domain" in any form or usage without the artist's written permission with the exception of as, non-distributable personal desktop computer wallpaper of a single user or in journal collections on this site.*** (I hate this stuff, too, but what can we do?)