Last Flam3 updates!
Download here: Flam3 2.7.12

Release as 2.7.12 - 05/16/08
*Added man pages.
*Removed upper limit on particle coordinates.
*fixed FSF address in comments.
*update to automake 1.10.1.
*added eps to denom of perspective fraction to avoid infinities (thanks fred).
*Put contents of ‘id’ env var in png/jpg comment block.

Release as 2.7.11. - 04/05/08
*Added 16 bit per channel support to PNG via bpc envar.
*isaac.h is now installed with the flam3 headers. Strip indexing now done with size_t’s to fix bug in large images (thanks Paul).
*Progress callback now returns ETA, and per-thread verbose flag functionality fixed.
*Enumerated spatial filter types now used in flam3.h, taking the place of function pointers (simplifies the API).
*Fix bug by moving precalculation of variation variables to flam3_iterate (thanks david).

Release as 2.7.10 - 03/15/08
* fixed interpolation bug when magnitude of rotation/scaling component of affine transform is 0.
* replaced secant variation with more flame-friendly secant2 (eliminates gap in y direction, scales y-coordinate by weight).
* warning message now printed when unrecognized variation is present in an xform.
* fixed bad inequality when checking for -pi/pi discontinuity during complex interpolation.

Release as 2.7.9 - 02/08/08
* non-zero weights for final xforms no longer allowed, and now have no effect.
* recompiled windows exes with mingw gcc 4.1 to take advantage of scalability improvements in flam3 2.7.8 (was compiling with mingw gcc 3.4 until now).
* for fedora package compliance, flam3.pc.in patched by ian weller and moved use of config.h to c files only.

Release as 2.7.8 - 01/26/08
* better scalability across multiple CPUs by using compare and swap (from Tim Hockin).
* fix bug in large images (>2GB).
* add flam3_srandom and flam3_malloc/free to better support wrapping with python on windows, which links with a different C runtime.
* add –enable-shared option to configure script (from Bobby R Ward).

Release as 2.7.7 - 12/16/07
* fixed bug (rare random crash) identified by david burnett.
i*nitialize new xforms with better defaults for parametric variations (based on interpolated-against xforms).
add id envar, like nick/url.
* add clone_action envar. return to xform interpolation based on complex logs, but make consistent decisions about *counter/clockwise rotation across the sheep edges.
* interpolation_space attribute to flame element can be set to “linear” to go back to the simpler method, or “log” to use this new (default) method.

Release 2.7.6 - 10/20/07
* fixed action string overflow when many xforms are present.
*added ‘print_edit_depth’ env var to control how many levels of tags are saved when using flam3-genome.
*Fixed wrong placement of random improve_colors code in flam3-genome.
*go to five digit filenames.
*fixed bug in supershape variation.
*API cleanup, thanks to david bitseff.

Release 2.7.5 - 08/14/07
* various code updates to assist with compiling under msvc++.
*now can specify –disable-pthread or –enable-pthread to configure to better control compilation. fixed bug preventing *renders of flames with more than 128 xforms.

This is very new and really interesting port of Flam3 to GPU via DirectX 10.

GPU Flame Fractal Renderer
Renderer for Flam3 cosmic recursive fractal flames implemented on GPU.
Requires DirectX 10 graphics card and Windows Vista.

Home: http://sourceforge.net/projects/flam4/

Another new update.

Flam3 2.7.4 by Scott Draves and Erik Reckase

Features List:
+ Fixed bug in split variation, now compatible with both versions of Apo.
+ Added insert_palette option.
+ Switched density estimation kernel from Epanichnikov to Gaussian.
+ Genetic cross now crosses palettes rather than selecting one of the parent palettes.
+ Remove noisy variations from random generation if use_vars or dont_use_vars not specified.
+ Fixed metrics calculated on small test render for genetic operations.
+ Reduced memory requirements for density estimation filters.
+ 64-bit linux distros now supported.
Release 2.7.4 - 07/12/07

Home Page: http://flam3.com/

This update resolves most of 2.7.2 problems and adds some new interesting features.
Generated sequences, like Sheeps or Edges, can now fully supported by Apo withouth any editing due to the ‘intpalette’ and ‘name’ tag writing (glad in seeing my requests implemented).

Flam3 2.7.3 by Scott Draves and Erik Reckase

Features List:
Flam3 version, rendered genome, some render statistics and
optionally nick/url stored in jpeg/png headers.
Fixed two bugs in isaac rng code (strongly affected temporal blur).
Prevent final xform rotation for sheep animation.
fixed interpolation when only one flame has final xform.
Added Supershape, Flower, Conic, Parabola, Move and Split variations.
Shape combined with Supershape via ‘rnd’ parameter.
Flam3-genome now writes ‘name’ attribute for rotate and sequence modes.
Oversample attribute deprecated; supersample now preferred.
New build process for windows exes using MinGW/MSYS.
Added ‘intpalette’ env var to round floating point palettes to allow older versions of Apophysis to read them.
Default image type is now PNG, transparency off.
Density estimation code revised to be more consistent between different supersample levels, which required change to default de params.
Limit number of de filters to conserve memory.
Fixed julia variation dependency on non-thread-safe random bit function.
Removed random number storage for radial blur variation.
Release 2.7.3 - 06/21/2007

Home Page: http://flam3.com/

Flam3 2.7.2 Final by Scott Draves and Erik Reckase

Features List:
Use isaac random number generator to avoid differences between mac/pc/linux.
use multiple threads to take advantage of multiple CPUs or cores.
new variations: disc2, Arch, Tangent, Square, Rays, Blade, Secant, Twintrian, Cross.
fixed bug reading hex color format - must remove \n prior to start of colors if present.
use EPS in spiral, hyperbolic and spherical to eliminate black spots.
fix numbering of disc2, change parameter to estimate_bounding_box.
made blur kernel type templatable.
removed extraneous ‘enabled=”1″‘ in writing out final xform information (no longer needed).
Release 2.7.2

Erik is doing a great work on new Flam3 code!

New tag “motion_exponent” adds a very useful feature:
“Using the new motion_exponent attribute, you can give the motion a direction instead of being a uniform blur.”

Complete post here:
http://electricsheep.wikispaces.com/Motion+Exponent

Erik fastly posted explanations about Flam3 2.7 Image Reduction Kernels.
Supported Kernels are: bell, blackman, box, bspline, gaussian, hamming, hanning, hermite, mitchell, quadratic, or triangle.

Full post here:
Image Reduction Kernels http://electricsheep.wikispaces.com/Image+Reduction+Kernels

Thanks Erik!

Flam3 2.7 changelog declare “Added settable kernel for downrez“.
I found this sentence a little cryptic; myabe I’m not the only one.

I tried flam3-genome to produce a Sequence and immediatly found a new tag: “filter_shape” and the default value is filter_shape=”gaussian”.
It sets different filtering modes; I used them many times in 3D and some 2D applications for resampling or filter images using diiferent approaches (algorithms).
So I took a fast look into the source code and found what I was searching for… the shapes list.

Here it is:
gaussian, hermite, box, triangle, bell, bspline, mitchell, blackman, catrom, hanning, hamming, lanczos3, lanczos2, quadratic.

I’d be quite easy find various resources about every algorithm in the net; just search.

Hope it helps.

P.S. I really don’t know if all modes are implemented or usable; I’ll take a deeper look at the source code as soon as I’ll have some spare-time. Spot or Erik could cast a ray of light about it really faster than me.

Flam3 2.7b7 Final by Scott Draves and Erik Reckase

Features List:
print out palette as floating point with up to 6 digits rather than integers (for very slow smooth transitions).
Added optimization to only recalculate the xform distrib array when necessary (Thanks Joel Faber). Added settable kernel for downrez.
Added XML reading code for new format for gradients.
Functionalized hex gradient read.
Removed color shift experimental feature.
New ‘motion_exponent’ attribute controls fade of temporal steps.
Added gaussian_blur and radial_blur vars from Apo.
Added “pie” and “ngon” variations from joel faber.
Add rotation_center attribute.
Added but disabled image variation from Joel.
Release as 2.7.

Direct download: http://flam3.com/flam3-2.7.zip
Download page: http://flam3.com/index.cgi?&menu=download
Readme: http://flam3.com/README.txt