Theoretically, I am taking the masking course right now. It looks fantastic from the materials Janet posted.

Realistically, however, I haven’t had any time to do anything at all with it and will re-enroll for the next time through. The first four weeks I was on vacation in the middle of nowhere, with no internet, and then as soon as I got back I got a commission to score the music to a high quality short film that will be making the film festival rounds. I just finished that score, and that took up all available creative time (and more!). I’m just now getting back to fractals.

Your message has motivated me to continue my experimental work on Fractal Animation. You have given me several useful tips (some that I still have to digest) that will orient me faster in this fascinating subject.

When I have something worth viewing I will send it to you.

Again sincere thanks.
Andre Gilber.

ps: Have you or will you take Janet’s course on Masking and how do you rate its usefulness for Fractal Animation.

The second one I did exactly as you suggest — I saved it directly from within UltraFractal (File/Save as JPEG) to retain the tissue paper look, so what you see here is exactly what I was after. Saving directly from UF doesn’t do anti-aliasing, so I made the image twice as big in UF and then squished it down in PhotoShop. This downsampling is roughly equivalent to UF’s anti-aliasing.

Thanks very much for your comments! It’s always inspirational to know that someone else is looking at this stuff.

In answer to your questions:

a) Yes, absolutely, UF animation is the foundation for everything that I do. I have many challenges with it for producing lengthy, production quality sequences, but it’s still the foundation. Every animation you see on this site is produced with UF animation, with other programs serving as helpers.

b) Yes, there is interesting synergy here. Eric Williams used a 3D program to do camera movements over giant still fractals in his Biocursion film. The results are spectacular. I may well play with this approach as well. I did something similar using Shake’s MultiPlane node — I didn’t like the results, but then again, it was just one quick trial. I’ll play with that some more, and will also play with other 3D programs.

Another thing I may end up doing is using a 3D program’s camera movement ability to output camera movements that I then translate into standard UF animation moves. That way I could potentially get smoother camera movement, taking advantage of a mature UI to do so, and still render with native UF capabilities. There’s no doubt at all in my mind I have to write some pre-processors for UF animation, and this would potentially be one of the types of pre-processors.

Having something that multiplies the creative possibilities is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it is potentially interesting to do things that UF can’t do natively. On the other hand, stretching what you can do with UF often opens up interesting possibilities. The course we just took with Janet was a real eye-opener for me, and my images got a lot better — and it was all native UF. I’m clearly going to leverage external programs like Shake and Motion to do interesting things with basic UF images, but I’m also increasingly impressed by what one can do just with UF.

c) One way or another, if you’re going to render fractal animations, you’re going to chew through a lot of CPU horsepower.

It’s faster to render a single large fractal image and then use an external 3D program to move and zoom around it. However, and this is a big limitation, that means you’re moving and zooming around a static image. Personally, I think it’s vital to have multiple parameters getting animated, which would thus require you to render the big fractal images frame by frame, which is thus a *slower* pipeline than pre-computing the resultant camera moves and just doing it in UF to begin with.

Keep in mind that my render time calculations are for HD video — 1280×720. If you want to produce YouTube sized videos, it’s 16x faster. You could easily do feature length films on your current machine if you’re targeting 320×180.

Also, keep in mind I’m aiming for a feature length film. If you do a shorter piece, you can whip out YouTube sized videos in an hour, and even HD ones in a day. My two videos I did for the WWUF class took just about a day apiece to render on a single MacPro Quad, using three instances of VMWare coordinated by my render queue.

Commercial render farms exist, and seem to cost about a dollar per Gigahertz-hour. Some are cheaper. All are too expensive for me. I can build a basic 3.4Ghz machine for $300, which means the ROI is about 100 hours of rendering compared to commercial farms. This still makes sense even with cheaper farms and factoring all the other TCO involved with owning your own machines — just a few hundred hours of productive rendering pay for owning your own machine. Most commercial rendering farms have a very limited set of programs they’ll render (eg, Maya is well supported) — and none of the ones I’ve seen support UF. That said, you could probably get one to run a virtual machine like VMWare which would provide a workaround.

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I hope these answers help!

- Bill

I was very impressed by your animation in the Griyo if 10 and your study 1 and all the related information you generously share with your readers.

I am a retired engineer and a new comer in the Fractal Universe !! My computer works has been mainly
in doing animations using 3dStudio Max and the related programs such as Adobe Premiere, Photoshop and so on. I just discovered the huge potential of Fractal Animation. That is why I took the course with Janet.

But reading the content of your conversation with Eric Williams I am somewhat disturbed at the rendering burden implied in making these Fractal Animations but also increasing my admiration for your work in resoving that issue on your own mini rendering farm. WoW.

May I ask a few basic questions on this overall subject.

a- Do you consider the use of the UF Animation feature a good way to create fractal animations.

b- I don’t know if you are familiar with 3dStudio, if so do you see interesting synergy between the
2 softwares. For instance you talk of camera movements, camera shake, panning of high definition images. All this and others features of 3dStudio could multiply the creative possibilities. What do you
think about that ??

c- Should I consider rendering in UF or 3dStudio or if I will have render through outside rendering
services. (a subject which I do not know anything about). I do not have the rendering facilities you have.
How would I go about to find such services and their costs, What is your estimate of such costs? Are they prohibitive for a Hobbyist (even a serious one)?

Note; I presently use an Intel Quad processor, 2 Gig of Ram on Vista, Dual Monitor.

Many thanks for whatever information you could provide. I any event I will continue to follow your development activities on your site.

Best regards,
Andre Giilbert

I’m currently rendering a little study movie based on “Corossus” that looks pretty neat. I’ll post a link on the class forum when it’s done.

I also appreciate the positive comment about Study #1. There’s a lot wrong with it, but what’s there I do think is pretty hip. Key for me are the dynamic parameters. I get pretty bored with just one thing changing (just zoom, or just gradient cycle, for example.) In my imagination, I see having five or six things changing most of the time.

Additionally, I think it’s important for what those things are to change, as well the rate at which they change. In longer works, I think it’s vital for the “and now, something completely different!” type of change.

I loved the music you selected for Hedgerow Bustle Picture Frame. I liked this one when I first saw it on your site, without music, but the music definitely added to it.

Music adds additional complexity and subtlety to images — similar to dynamic parameters. In Hollywood films, the sound (dialog, effects, and music) is every bit as important as the visuals. Coordination between all these elements is vital to maintain that sense of “movie space” where you’re mentally transported out of your seat and into the movie.

As far as some people not liking a particular choice of music: no argument, it will happen. For me, it’s a non-issue. If I wanted wide popularity I sure as heck wouldn’t be creating fractal movies! This is a small niche of a small niche…

And even if I turn off a part of that small niche because they don’t like my music, that’s ok. I’m creating what I need to create. I quit doing music professionally years ago because I have an odd, unique musical style that’s all over the genre landscape. I think my music is pretty cool, and a few other people do, but I’m sure most people will think it’s weird. I may well lose them because they hate the music.

Thanks for the kind comments. Much appreciated.

“Study 1″ looks sharp. I know it’s just a trial run, but I added it to the list of HD animations at http://FractalAnimation.com. Great to see another animator making HD zooms with dynamic parameters.

I share your assessment of what comprises a good fractal animation. A soundtrack can definitely add a lot, especially when it syncs well. I do set my animations to music, though I haven’t been putting those versions on my website. If you like, you can check out one of my better efforts at http://ericbigas.com/temp

One problem I’ve found with using music is that viewers have strong and varied opinions about what’s appropriate as a soundtrack. Techno, ambient, psychedelic rock, metal, classical, and fractal music are all popular choices for fractal animations. Whatever you choose, a lot of viewers aren’t going to like it and will find it to be an unpleasant distraction. Some won’t even watch the animation or will say it’s no good just because they didn’t like the music.

Looking forward to reading to your future posts. I’m really impressed by your determination and outside-the-box thinking.

– Eric