Flamin' Heck, Mr A!

Recently, my good friend Jenny, Lady-Compassion, suggested that I have a look at a recent version of Apophysis, a software system that generates fractal flames. Almost simultaneously Lea, Leanndra51 drew my attention to another version of flame fractal software called JWildfire which makes use of the basic algorithms of Apophysis but presents them in a fresh manner with lots of extras built in. Jwildfire has been written by Andreas Maschke with the help of many contributors. Two links to the system are: www.andreas-maschke.com/?page_…  www.jwfsanctuary.club/, the first gives access to downloads and the second to the community and resources that have grown up around JWildfire. Although I have long been interested in fractals and the potential for art works, I must say that I'm a complete newbie - a tyro- when it comes to fractal flames and the images presented here must be viewed in that light. One of the great things about the JWildfire system is that there are a great number of pre-written and installed scripts that allow you to make some amazing images with very little effort. One particular contributor to the script resource is Michael Bourne and the following few images are derived from his "SX 00 I am Ace in Space2" script. This script generates either completely symmetrical compositions such as the first two shown here or images that seem to be symmetrical but on close inspectin there is an asymmetry of detail.








Rather than left-right symmetry the script can generate rotational symmetry as in the following example or displaced symmetry, that is part of a symmetrical structure, as in the further example below.





Another intriguing feature of JWildfire, one that I have not previously come across as associated with fractals, but one with which I am well familiar from photography is the generation of "HDR" images - HDR standing for High Dynamic Range. The idea is fairly simple. In photography, the dynamic range of the image is the range of brightness values that can be recorded without the bright and shadow ends being clipped out. To overcome this limitation you take normally three shots with two being plus or minus 2  (or whatever) stops from the mid value. Software then combines the images to enhance the shadows and the bright end to give an image showing much more detail in both than could normally be recorded. Now, this idea is being applied to fractals. Computation will give a fractal structure in which some detail is lost because the dynamic range of the result of the  calculations is greater than that which a monitor can display. However an HDR image can be calculated and then tone-mapped to give an image, just like in digital photography. All that may sound a bit too much to fathom, but a couple of examples shows the effect. Both of the flame fractals are entirely of my making - just messing around really - and they show the basic calculated fractal on the left and the HDR version on the right. The first example shows the amount of detail that is "lost" in the displaying the fractal as "normal" compared to the HDR version.

  

This second example of "normal" versus HDR is probably a closer call as to which is visually more powerful. The normal version has a better contrast ratio and shows more local detail while the HDR version on the right shows more detail over all and greater brightness, but loses some contrast.

  

If you already into flame fractals, then all of this is probably old hat, but for anyone contemplating venturing into the intricate and absorbing world of fractal geometry and fractal art then JWildfire offers incredible potential, albeit requiring a steep learning curve.

Cheers

David aka Okavanga