What’s New in FA X and FA 5 !

Its time for new versions of Fractal Architect: Fractal Architect X (and its peer: Fractal Architect 5). Two years in development. The new creative possibilities are amazing. This is a huge new version with many new powerful and easy to use features. It has the best workflows of any competing app.

Some of these new FA features are credited to prior Jwildfire innovations. (FA has a long term goal of being fully Jwildfire compatible — not there yet).

All new features are GPU rendering compatible (but if Apple’s OpenCL or Metal drivers are broken, you may not be able to use GPU rendering on your Mac).

Lennart Ostman’s FA 5 Fractal Collection

Lennart has been so excited by these new features and how easy it is to use them. A simple listing does not do them justice.

Here is the grand summary. (More on each feature in other blog posts.)

Composite Multi-Fractals – Fractals made from other fractals

Let us count the ways:

  1. Crossbreeding (Morphing) –  morphing 2 different composite fractals to create a new one.
  2. Splicing — splice together the variation group chains of 2 basic  fractals
  3. Layerz — layering of multiple basic fractals sharing the same histogram (Jwildfire)
  4. Sub-flames – invoke another basic fractal via subflames variation type (Jwildfire)
Easiest way to create these composite multi-fractals
  1. Crossbreeding:  Use Cross Breeding editor.
  2. Splicing:                  Use new Lua splicing scripts
  3. Layerz:   Select multiple thumbnails. then open Quicklook view to see the layered result. Save the selected thumbnails as a new layered fractal.
  4. Sub-flames: Use sub-flame Lua scripts to add either new  normal or new final transforms with sub-flame variation.
Final Transforms Enhancements
  1. Multiple final transforms
  2. Using sub-flame variations in final transforms.

Variants + Super Variants + Lua Workflow

Best demonstrated with an example video, this workflow is so effective for creative new exciting fractals.

From the Variants editor, create variants using Lua scripts. Select a variant thumbnail, then open the Super Variants editor from the selected thumbnail. Use the Super Variants editor to find even more fractals  related to your selected thumbnail.

From that new batch of thumbnails, select one and open a new Variants window.  Select a different variant Lua script …. repeat ad nauseam.

Finally, stop with a thumbnail you like. Then create a new fractal from it and finish editing it in the Transform editor (the traditional Apophysis workflow).

So many of these new composite fractal features are easiest to use with the new Lua scripts found in FA 5. You will see!

Lua Scripting Improvements

In practice, these features make a huge improvement in the Variants workflow.

  1. 40 different  Make Fractal and 95 Variant Lua Scripts included
  2. Save a fractal as a Lua script. (Used by item 4 below)
  3. Lua scripts can have input arguments.
  4. Generic scripts to add pre, normal, and post variations selected by user from a list.
  5. Many scripts now call other Lua scripts for splicing, layerz, and sub-flames.
  6. You can create a list of variant Lua scripts and save the list as a single new Lua script. (Any configured argument values are saved too.)
  7. Full traceback for reported Lua errors.
Crackle Variation on the GPU

Finally! Blazing fast.

Got a new Lua script to add crackle variation to existing fractals too.

New Hypertile Lua Scripts

Add hypertile variation to any existing 2D fractal. Automates the steps and randomizes the hypertile parameters.

Incredibly easy and so effective in practice.

One Last Thing: True 3D Fractals !!

Pseudo3D is so legacy.  True3D is the state-of-the-art replacement.

If you create a fractal with a 3D variation set, it is automatically a true 3D fractal. Every transform in it is now a 3D transform.

If you open a Pseudo3D fractal created in FA 4 or Apophysis, it is converted to a True3D fractal. (No change in appearance.)

Recent versions of Jwildfire, use a technique I call Pseudo3D-Three-Times to render a 3D fractal. It uses 3 separate 2D transforms.

FA 5 does not. It uses 1 3D transform instead of 3 separate 2D transforms. This is the natural way to do 3D. The rendering cost for 1 3D transform is also 33% less than rendering with 3 separate 2D transforms.

How do I manipulate a 3D transform?

Like Jwildfire, in FA 5 you can edit 3 different  triangles, one face at a time. There are 3 faces, called the XY, YZ, and ZX faces.

But simple things like rotating that 3D transform around an arbitrary rotation is basically impossible with this approach.

So …

Another Last Thing: 3D Tetrahedron Editor !!

FA 5 includes a full 3D Tetrahedron editor that allows you to manipulate the Tetrahedron (which represents the 3D transform). A tetrahedron corresponds to 3D just like a triangle corresponds to a 2D transform.

This a basic 3D modeler, which allow you to edit a 3D transform by manipulating its equivalent 3D tetrahedron.

  • Rotate the transform about an arbitrary axis:  easy.
  • Translate the transform around in 3D space:   easy.
  • Scale the transform: easy.

You can switch back and forth between the 3D Tetrahedron view and the 3 Triangle face views at any time.

Enhancements For Fractal Animation Sequencing

These features greatly simplify the steps to creating great video animations.

Delta Keyframe Animations

Concept: take 2 fractals and capture their difference as a delta animation segment.

Now that variants can create fractals that are so extremely different from the original, delta animations are they only way to capture their changes.  The delta segment captures a separate animation for each property that is different between the 2 fractals.

Drag a keyframe from the Variants editor to the Sequencer. You get a new animation segment, which captures the delta between the original and variant fractals.

In the Sequencer, you can assign a different animation curve to each property — a very powerful feature.

It is so easy to create great animations, by dragging a Variants editor thumbnail and dropping it on the Sequencer.

Morph Animation Improvements

Perfect Color gradient interpolation that matches keyframe colors.

New workflow for creating smooth morph animations that don’t have instantaneous shape changes.

Smoothed Audio Clip Animation Curves

Take an audio file and create an animation curve from it. This is an easy way to get an animation curve for fractal animation.

Audio Curve Smoothing – an FA innovation

Without smoothing, the resulting video animations can be gut wrenching. Audio signals are packed with high frequency noise that when sampled from create terrible animations. Jerky-jerky floppy-woppy. I can’t watch those animations myself.

A smoothed audio signal captures the essence of the audio signal, but eliminates the high frequency noise. Video animations then look so much better. But even these animations can be improved upon.

Use a smoothed click track as an animation curve

Use a simple musician’s click track to create an audio file. Now use that  audio file to create an audio clip animation curve.

Result: Perfect video animation to the beat.  This is the killer way to create great beat animations. You can watch and dance to these animations all day long!

Mac OS High Sierra Wide Gamut Videos & Smaller Video Sizes

Make videos that have deeper color saturation and wider dynamic range.

New Apple HEVC Codec support that creates output videos that take much less memory than H.264 codec.

Fractal Architect 4 render engine

The Fractal Architect 4 render engine, given robust, quality drivers, has worked on all versions of Mac OS (except partially on High Sierra because of driver problems). AMD, Nvidia, and Intel GPUs all can be used. It supports CUDA  and OpenCL.

The Apple CPU OpenCL driver has always worked over the last 7 years, so when the GPU drivers are defective, users can still use the app with CPU rendering.

Nvidia GPUs and CUDA are also supported (but not in the FA 4 Mac App store version because of app sandboxing) on both Mac OS and Windows 10.

It has  been ported to Windows 10 and there it also works with AMD and Nvidia GPUS.  Intel GPUs worked with 1 version of Intel’s OpenCL drivers but not with a later OpenCL driver update. (So the Windows platform is also affected by driver quality issues.)

Intel’s OpenCL driver for CPU on Windows 10 does not work with the FA 4 render engine.

The render engine is a fantastic test case for GPU compute and can be used by OpenCL and CUDA driver developers to validate the quality of their drivers. The render engine itself is open source and licensed with LGPL license.

FAEngine – FA 4 Open Source Render Engine

The app itself is even easier to use for driver quality testing on Mac OS. Metal is supported by the app (but not in the open source render engine).

Earlier versions of the render engine have worked on all versions of Mac OS since 2009.

Fractal Software is made by Indie Hobbyists

Let’s make sure that is understood. There has never been a commercially successful product in this app category.

Right now, myself and Andreas Maschke are the most active developers in the flame fractal app category. I am the author of Fractal Architect. Andreas is the developer of JWildfire. Both our products are huge, with multiple man years of development. (For FA, it is 9 man years.) I receive testing support from Lennart Ostman, for which I am deeply grateful.

That gives the illusion of a huge team creating these products, but it is just 2 hobbyists doing what we love best. We do it for love, as I have never been paid a single cent for my time. I receive no financial support to produce this product. All test hardware is paid using app revenues. (The remainder I pay out of my own pocket.)

Fractal Architect 5 (in development) is about 3x larger than the historic Photoshop 1 when it was first released 27 years ago.

So when you expect Facebook pages, forums, blog, and tons of support, we are not Adobe with billions in revenue and 1000’s of employees. Remember I make NO money from this app.

All app revenues pays for test hardware – nothing else.

Is it time to remove GPU rendering support from the app?

Update: GPU rendering now requires a subscription in both FA 5 and FA X. Hopefully that will help us support this very expensive app (to support) feature.

Let’s face it. Apple has done a terrible job producing reliable drivers for OpenCL and Metal compute shaders. Each Mac OS update brings the terror of: Did Apple kill the drivers this time?

Since March 2017, the state of OpenCL drivers for AMD GPUs has been: Unusable

Either the app crashes or you get a total system lockup with OpenCL AMD rendering. (late 2016 MacBook Pro with AMD GPU)

With about 100 different Mac configurations released in the last 6 years that have GPUs, your results will probably be very different.

For the 5 previous years, the AMD OpenCL drivers had been rock solid.

Fractal Architect is the “Rosetta Stone” for GPU compute testing. It allows you to easily switch render devices between OpenCL, Metal, and CUDA. It allows you to check their LLVM compilers for their ability to compile the extremely complex kernels used by the app.

It allows you to profile and compare performance between devices and between different Mac models.

But supporting GPU rendering is very expensive. Guess who pays for all of the test Macs?

The revenue base to support this GPU support feature is tiny.  Flame fractal apps are a micro niche. To date (since 2009) the entire revenue from the app goes toward buying test hardware and nothing else !

This year, because of driver quality problems, worldwide sales of the app are now so low that I can only buy 1 test Mac every 3 years. I cant test the app on a current generation AMD GPU on a low end MacBook Air. I can’t test next years AMD GPU on last year’s Mac.

So should:

A) GPU rendering be removed from the app as test hardware is cost prohibitive?

or B) should it be left in because it will probably work with fixed drivers on future GPUs?

Perma-Broke Apple AMD OpenCL Drivers

Update Spring 2018

The OpenCL driver for AMD is working again. AMD Metal driver does not correctly render final transforms.

Fall 2017

Its now 7 months of broken OpenCL drivers for the AMD GPU in the late 2016 Touch Bar MacBook Pro. (Since Sierra 10.12.4. Affects all builds of High Sierra.)

Metal drivers work correctly for the Mac’s AMD GPU, but some fractals (10 to 20%) render incorrectly. So I don’t recommend Metal as an alternative.  (Note: this incorrect render output is a new problem. Older Metal driver versions did not have this problem. The drivers in Q1 2017 worked so well. Now it is Q4 2017.

The legacy of Apple’s unusable GPU compute drivers goes on and on.