Fractal Generation

alvordr

alvordr

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Fractal Generation

Folks,

I've been toying with the idea of using fractals to generate new textures. I know people have used Fractal Noise for After Effects (something I don't own). I've found a number of fractal generators that, although don't specifically perform all the functions that Fractal Noise handles, I figure I could work with the fractals in Photoshop, etc., to do basically the same thing.

Has anyone else messed with fractals at all in their work and how successful were the implementations?

Anything we should avoid, please also list those.

NOTE: By the way, I found a few free Mac-friendly fractal programs I thought might be worth using. I hope this helps:

FractalWorks
Endlos
Xaos

Also, if you're insane enough to try to program one of these, this site may be extremely useful, as the math behind it seems rather simple (for Einstein!):
Fractal Mathematical Equations
 
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Hello, again. This is one example I was able to create using a fractal generator, where the result was fairly positive. I could likely mix it better, but the fractal here was used to simulate an oil spill.

oilspill.jpg
 
Here is a better, more realistic example:

oilspill1.jpg


I simply decreased the transparency mix and intensity, to get a weaker fractal look, and then increased the refraction to get the multicolored swaths.
 
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Although the bump mapping is too much here, I think it effectively shows how fractal generation could be used to simulate wood rings. Just a thought...

chairlegringed.jpg
 
I think you're onto something here. And to think, I thought fractals went out of style in 1993!

I was mucking around earlier today and grabbed an old (freeware) copy of KPT Bryce. The program is so out of date as to not be useful anymore, but I believe that the core idea of fractal generated terrains is still a good one.

I wonder if there's a way to have cheetah warp a mesh based on a monochrome image? This is what bryce does, generates a fractal pattern, runs it thru some filters, and then the 2D image becomes a landscape by raising the verticies of a plane by an amount equal to the brightness of the pixel in the image. (Or that's how it seems Bryce works.)
 
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liza said:
I think you're onto something here. And to think, I thought fractals went out of style in 1993!

I was mucking around earlier today and grabbed an old (freeware) copy of KPT Bryce. The program is so out of date as to not be useful anymore, but I believe that the core idea of fractal generated terrains is still a good one.

I wonder if there's a way to have cheetah warp a mesh based on a monochrome image? This is what bryce does, generates a fractal pattern, runs it thru some filters, and then the 2D image becomes a landscape by raising the verticies of a plane by an amount equal to the brightness of the pixel in the image. (Or that's how it seems Bryce works.)
Click to expand...

Liza,

I can conceptualize how this can be done with script, but I'm not practiced enough with the scripting to achieve it. I can see how this program can easily grow into quite a huge array of very powerful tools, beyond what it already does. I'm eager to get my hands on the next version, as I'm sure everyone else is.

:smile:
 
Liza,

I just remembered...you can do exactly what you're saying using a monochrome map. You have to convert it to a vector image, as you might in Illustrator. At that point, you should be able to import and extrude it or, perhaps, use it as a spline (I seem to recall there was something about this in the forums). You could then extrude the map, as needed.

Podperson knows a lot about this and is likely one of the best resources here for the concept. (http://cheetah3d.de/forum/showthread.php?t=3341&highlight=vector+maps). One thing you'll notice, however, is the fact that the example from his thread here extrudes all the polygons at once. To get a relief-like result, another technique might be better.

I'm inspired now. I want to tackle this...:cool:
 
KPT, is Kai's Power Tools, it was a photoshop plug-in. Bryce is Bryce, its a Landascape generation and rendering tool, had some pretty powerful tools in version 5, you can do modeling in it too.
I dont know what happened to KPT after Meta Creation sold all there apps to other people, I think it ended up with Corel, not sure though, Poser ended up with Daz, not sure what happened to Bryce, Power Goo or Soap. (Sorry was a fan of Kai Krause interface design and the general power of Meta Creations products)

For Babylon 5 Ron Thornton reportedly used fractal maps as dirt/grim maps.
 
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You do realize that this is *exactly* how procedural materials (e.g. in Bryce) work (and also the way a lot of Photoshop filters and CoreImage stuff works) -- the big difference is that they use a variety of different kinds of "fractal" algorithms to get different effects.

You can implement some of this stuff on GPUs and do it in real time these days.

You might find these links interesting:
Procedural Texture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_textures
Texture Synthesis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texture_synthesis
Julia Set: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_set
Perlin Noise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perlin_noise
http://processing.org/learning/basics/noise3d.html

Perlin noise is fast enough to be used in some real-time examples built in Unity -- e.g. to create impressive lightning effects.
 

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podperson said:
You do realize that this is *exactly* how procedural materials (e.g. in Bryce) work (and also the way a lot of Photoshop filters and CoreImage stuff works) -- the big difference is that they use a variety of different kinds of "fractal" algorithms to get different effects.
Click to expand...

I was thinking the same thing. Bryce was basically built as a graphical interface to play with fractals more than it was ever designed as a 3D tool. Part of the reason I always found it so much fun!
 
If you look at this thread you'll see C3D is going to have EXACTLY what you're asking for:

http://www.cheetah3d.de/forum/showthread.php?t=3394

(The example shows a procedural brick material -- but different parametric noise inputs are a no-brainer.)

Yes, the previous screenshot was taken from Blender's texture panel which lets you choose from a variety of procedural inputs (such as the fractal noise options displayed) as well as less chaotic options such as tiling patterns.

And here's Bryce's material lab, which lets you assign four different procedural inputs (including things like the height value) to any of a material's channels. It was pretty ground-breaking back in the day (i.e. 1995) -- but these days pretty much every mid- and high- end 3D package has the same functionality.
 

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Yep, Cheetah3D 5.0 will come with the possibility to create custom procedural textures. So far I've implemented over a dozen of procedural textures (noise, turbulence, reptile skin, voronoi, etc.) and more will follow in the 5.x updates.

Bye,
Martin
 
Thank You

I'm just thankful for what's to come. Cheetah is a phenomenal package and for the price, it's super competitive. I find myself learning more and more each day. I practice with it daily and I'm finding some things that were too challenging before, becoming much easier to tackle.

With helpful tips from Frank, Podperson, Luke, and others, as well as awesome scripts from Hiroto, you've got quite a powerful group here.
 
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