Archive for the 'Flam3' Category

Flam3 2.8 Beta7 release mainly adds full interpolation for ‘Highlight power’ and it corrects the flam3-genome ’split’ (broken during the previous betas).

Thanks a lot to Erik Reckase for the new update!

Download it here:
flam3-2.8-beta7.zip – 32-bit Windows for 1-2 core machines
flam3-2.8-beta7-atomic.zip – 32-bit Windows for 3+ core machines

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Render Flam3 Padding XForms is a unique feature that I introduced in the script version 1.3.7 (04 November 2008). It was mainly coded to adjust some quirks related to the Morph animation type so the user can have a better control of the whole morphing process but it can also affect Edge and Sheep ones.

Why I’m talking about it?
I’ve had no feedback about it (I’m not blaming anyone) but the script has some potential that lays underneath the surface and the current preliminary documentation doesn’t help at all (I’ll work on it as soon as possible too).
So I was just guessing: “Had someone tried it at all?”. Who knows…

Four simple video examples can maybe show how Padding XForms changes the animation motion.

Render Flam3 Padding XForms ON – Morph animation

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Flam3 2.8 Beta6 release mainly corrects some bugs and adds some new Variations to the executables and the  flam3 shared library (read below).

New Variations: auger, cos, cosh, cot, coth, csc, csch, exp, log, sec, sech, sin, sinh, tan, tanh.

Thanks a lot to Erik Reckase for the new update!

Download it here:
flam3-2.8-beta6.zip – 32-bit Windows for 1-2 core machines
flam3-2.8-beta6-atomic.zip – 32-bit Windows for 3+ core machines

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I just don’t believe how much fast the time flows; the last release is approaching to a month ago. I’ve got so few spare time to work on the script: the new code was added during the weeks but I was out of testing possibilities due to some main-job urgencies.
Well, there’s not much hurry: no users response at all!
… I’m not complaining, it’s the world we live in …
… Any which way, we’re going to need a little luck …

Beta3 is a quite good step forward to me. I’m quite near to the end of the 1.3.x planned-features-table so maybe I’d be better stay silent and go on with the coding. Who knows! :O
The new 1.4.x will have plenty of new small commodities and it’ll be mainly focused on usability. You know I’m still on the case.

Flam3 installation is now checked using Apophysis “Export renderer” path: we’ll no see the annoying request anymore, plus it can be easily changed just in case you need to use some different Flam3 versions.

Flam3 2.8 Bet4 stagger env var is now fully supported, plus I added the ‘oscope’ to ‘oscilloscope’ conversion and dropped redundant and useless (to Flam3) Flame.Angle tag.

The other small adds can be found in the Changelog.

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Flam3 2.8 Beta5 release mainly corrects Waves2 variation problems plus some other small ones (read below).

Thanks a lot to Erik Reckase for the new update!

Download it here:
flam3-2.8-beta5.zip – 32-bit Windows for 1-2 core machines
flam3-2.8-beta5-atomic.zip – 32-bit Windows for 3+ core machines

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I’m back to this script again after more than one year.
Why? Well, some update needs surfaced out of genetic-design mailing list during the last days.

First of all I’ve had the confirmation that the ‘twintrian’ Variation is currently banned; when a Flame containing this Variation is uploaded then the designer will have a surprise: the result it’ll be different cos the server silently erase it.

I’ve secondly discovered that ES (ElectricSheep) server limits to 5 the number of Variations per Transforms (XForm); I was completely unaware of it or I forgot the limitation when I firstly coded the script (I really don’t remember).

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Stagger env var is another Flam3 2.8 new feature.
It permits to control how the Transforms are interpolated during the animation; every designer can use this feature to customize the animation motions.
It applies to all animation modes created by Flam3: Sheep (Loop), Edge and Morph ones.

Erik Reckase explains it this way: “Setting stagger to 0 means the same as current behaviour. stagger=1 means that each xform will interpolate one at a time instead of simultaneously. stagger=0.5 means that the second xform will start halfway through the interpolation of the first xform, and so on.” and also “Affects simultaneity of xform interpolation during genome interpolation. Represents how ’separate’ the xforms are interpolated. Set to 1 for each xform to be interpolated individually, fractions control interpolation overlap.”

Setting stagger to 0 is like not having it at all. The Transforms are in both cases interpolated in the old Flam3 2.7.xx way.

I’ve prepared 4 small clips that visually explain the ’stagger’ env var usage.
The first two clips represent what previously said about stagger=0 and no stagger usage: the result is the same!

Morph animation – stagger OFF

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Flam3 2.8 Beta4 release corrects the ‘animate’ mode bug; see here: Flam3 2.8 Beta3
Previous betas was unable to create Morph animations correctly; the correct ‘animate’ mode implementation is back and this release can create them too.

Thanks a lot to Erik Reckase for the fast update!

Download it here:
flam3-2.8-beta4.zip – 32-bit Windows for 1-2 core machines
flam3-2.8-beta4-atomic.zip – 32-bit Windows for 3+ core machines

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Flam3 2.8 new highlight_power tag usage comparison.

This image reports the result on the same setup rendered using a value ranging from -1 (disabled) up to 4.

See the original setup here: Round & Round

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The new Flam3 2.8 Beta3 release is actually available for testing.
Thanks a lot to Erik Reckase for the new releases!

Warning: there’s a bug related to flam3-genome; it cannot properly execute when used with ‘animate’ mode (animate env var active). Already communicated to Erik: a fix will be available in a few days.

Download it here:
flam3-2.8-beta3.zip – 32-bit Windows for 1-2 core machines
flam3-2.8-beta3-atomic.zip – 32-bit Windows for 3+ core machines

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The new Flam3 2.8 Beta2 release is actually available for testing.

There’s a great bunch of new features in this release!

First of all Flam3 2.8 runs faster than 2.7, averaging about 20-30% or more depending on variations, due to a significant speed optimization.

New supported Variations:
bipolar, boarders, butterfly, cell, cpow, curve, edisc, elliptic, escher, foci, lazysusan, loonie, pre_blur, modulus, oscilloscope, polar2, popcorn2, scry, separation, split, splits, stripes, wedge, wedge_julia, wedge_sph, whorl, waves2
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A new release is available here: RenderFlam3

Well, this is the public beta release.
Sorry for the setback about beta1 but I found a couple of quirks that could potentially lead users to some headaches.

The Chaos tag was improperly including the FinalXForm value (always equal to 1); this value is totally redundant and unneeded.

Global Camera Rotation feature (introduced in 1.3.8.3 release) was spinning the Camera in the wrong direction (the opposite one) cos Apophysis uses an inverted Rotation value.

This version supports most of the new Flam3 2.8 Beta2 new features.

Download it here (Right Click / Save As): RenderFlam3.zip

Released under GPL License – http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
Credits or donations are not mandatory but very appreciated especially when using “RenderFlam3″ in commercial production.
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A new release is available here: RenderFlam3

I’m finally approaching the last 1.3.x release (better later than nothing).
I’m actually calling it “beta1″ cos I didn’t have much time to deep test it but I’m quite sure that it should not have strange behaviors or quirks in it.

I’ve added complete Flam3 2.8 beta support: new Variations, new env var and new Flame tags.
The Export routine is finally forced to a single code loop and I’ve corrected some small/rare and quite old quirks.

There’s a lot to list but I think it’s faster and better to read below (Changelog) for all the new stuff.

This is an “internal” release.
Download RenderFlam3 1.3.8.6 here (Right Click / Save As): RenderFlam3.zip

Released under GPL License – http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
Credits or donations are not mandatory but very appreciated especially when using “RenderFlam3″ in commercial production.
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A new release is available here: RenderFlam3

Just a very fast maintenance release!

I found a misspelling into the .bat file writing routine cos “nthread” parameter should be “nthreads”. Modifying the misspelled “nthread” value has no effects at all on the number of Threads used by Flam3.

Sorry for the setback.

Download here (Right Click / Save As): RenderFlam3.zip

Released under GPL License – http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
Credits or donations are not mandatory but very appreciated especially when using “RenderFlam3″ in commercial production.

Complete Render Flam3 posts archive: Search about Render Flam3

RenderFlam3 main purpose is rendering a sequence of Flames using Flam3 to create animations.
It’s an Apophysis script which cycles through the flames in the Title Window,
sets their time field,
sets their advanced animation tags,
saves them all off to a single flame file,
and then creates a bat file (to the same output path).
Executing the bat file will launch flam3-animate and render the animation’s frames; Flam3 will interpolate all the flames.
RenderFlam3 can create Morph, Sheep or Edge animations.

Flam3 supported Variations:
linear, sinusoidal, spherical, swirl, horseshoe, polar, handkerchief, heart, disc, spiral, hyperbolic, diamond, ex, julia, bent, waves, fisheye, popcorn, exponential, power, cosine, rings, fan, blob, pdj, fan2, rings2, eyefish, bubble, cylinder, perspective, noise, julian, juliascope, blur, gaussian_blur, radial_blur, pie, ngon, curl, rectangles, arch, tangent, square, rays, blade, secant2, twintrian, cross, disc2, super_shape, flower, conic, parabola, split and move.

Preliminary Docs are included in the new archive.
Read the Docs or below for new features.

Changelog
v 1.3.8.6 – 14 September 2009
“nthreads” parameter was misspelled as “nthread” into the .bat file.
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A new release is available here: RenderFlam3

I’ve been back to the script during the last days and found that before adding more new features I’ll better use the 1.3.8.x releases to add some more maintenance stuff.
There was some more coding left outside during the last releases due to the lack of spare time.

1. User defined JPEG quality and 16bit PNG support let users to fully customize the generated files both in terms of Format and Quality.
2. Flames checking is now selectable: this feature is very important cos the preliminary Flames checking could require various minutes on big Flames files. Users can use this feature to skip it. It’s should be used on Flames you’ve already checked for Flam3 compatibility.
3. Progress display for preliminary Flames checking and Better progress display for Flames saving let users in having a better and more complete feedback of the operations done by the working script.
4. BAT file header reports Flam3 and RenderFlam3 used version and BAT file header reports Generation parameters give users some information about the environment used to generate the Flame-sequence and the BAT file generated parameters.
5. BAT file is better commented give users more explanatory comments into the generated BAT file; it’d be more easy to optimize the whole rendering process now.

The interesting thing about this script is that, taking a look to the Site’s statistics, I’ve found there’s still some quite good interest in it; it’s actually often browsed and downloaded but I rarely have back some comments or usage tracks: I’m quite mature to know that the general Internet rule is “grab what you can“.

Well, I’ve spent some time tracing the users old requests and working to better code them, as far as possible,  instead of adding a new bunch of stuff.
Most of the things are now implemented and some more will be added during the next maintenance releases.

Download here (right click / Save As): RenderFlam3.zip

Released under GPL License – http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
Credits or donations are not mandatory but very appreciated especially when using “RenderFlam3″ in commercial production.

Complete Render Flam3 posts archive: Search about Render Flam3

Low-quality preview of the Global Camera Rotation feature

RenderFlam3 main purpose is rendering a sequence of Flames using Flam3 to create animations.
It’s an Apophysis script which cycles through the flames in the Title Window,
sets their time field,
sets their advanced animation tags,
saves them all off to a single flame file,
and then creates a bat file (to the same output path).
Executing the bat file will launch flam3-animate and render the animation’s frames; Flam3 will interpolate all the flames.
RenderFlam3 can create Morph, Sheep or Edge animations.

Flam3 supported Variations:
linear, sinusoidal, spherical, swirl, horseshoe, polar, handkerchief, heart, disc, spiral, hyperbolic, diamond, ex, julia, bent, waves, fisheye, popcorn, exponential, power, cosine, rings, fan, blob, pdj, fan2, rings2, eyefish, bubble, cylinder, perspective, noise, julian, juliascope, blur, gaussian_blur, radial_blur, pie, ngon, curl, rectangles, arch, tangent, square, rays, blade, secant2, twintrian, cross, disc2, super_shape, flower, conic, parabola, split and move.

Preliminary Docs are included in the new archive.
Read the Docs or below for new features.

Changelog
v 1.3.8.5 – 18 June 2009
User defined JPEG quality added
16bit PNG support added
Flames checking is now selectable
Progress display for preliminary Flames checking
Better progress display for Flames saving
BAT file header reports Flam3 and RenderFlam3 used version
BAT file header reports Generation parameters
BAT file is better commented
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