🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3j01u8$qqi@news.bu.edu>, genew@bu.edu (Doyle Williams) writes...
>Greetings all,
>    I'm looking for a 24BIT fractal program that has the same basic features
>as FRACTINT (i.e., color cycling, 3Ding, zooming, skewing, ability to plug in
>formulas, etc.). This program could be freeware, shareware, or
>commercial. I've got a couple of the generators that just do Mandelbrots, but
>we're looking for more options (not that a Mandel is boring) and variety along
>the lines of FRACTINT.
>Thanks Again

	There are a few myth's and misconceptions that should be discussed in
this thread. Some of them may be mine. First thing, 24 bit fractal generation
itself hasn't really been properly implemented by anyone that I'm aware of.
Ok, people tell me that Kai's Power Tools has a mandelbrot generator that can
produce 24 bit images. From what I hear, and the images I have seen that it
produced, it  looks like it uses the iteration count to produce a 24 bit image
by shading and filtering algorithms. I was told that colour control consists
of  512 setpoints that will software interpolate to produce a full spectrum.
Does anyone know if this is anywhere near the truth? Fine, so it does produce
a 24 bit fractal image, but in this regard so does any raytracer that can
import a height field and many nice 24 bit fractals have been produced this
way, but that isn't really my idea of a 24 bit fractal generator. Someone
just released a small low resolution 24 bit lyapunov program for ibmpc's but
I haven't had time to look at it yet. Anyone care to review it? Maybe some
of the Mac software might be 24 bit, I'm not a Mac person so I can't be sure,
but, I don't think Mandella or Mandelzot or any of the well known Mac
programs are 24 bit.

	There are some major technical problems with implementing 24 bit fractal
generators. First of all basic colouring algorithms don't work as simply
anymore. No one is going to iterate each pixel 4 million times, at least not
with this current generation of computing hardware. Tim Wegner started a
thread years ago in Alt.Fractals trying to discuss various colouring
algorithms for 24 bit fractals. He had some nice ideas of combining colouring
options such as iteration count, real component, imag , mult, summ, etc...
Pick any three options and apply one to each of the Red, Green, and Blue
portion to produce a 24 bit image. I think there is even some instructions
in the current version of fractint to create this with existing software
by calculating the image three times and then overlaying them with another
software package. This is all do-able right now but perhaps a little
cumbersome. Anyone got any nice images that they have created this way and
want to show off? A real 24 bit fractal generator using these techniques
would have to let you select 3 algorithms and then calculate each pixel
three times. Well maybe only once if you chose only one escape criteria.
There maybe a lot of different techniques out there that haven't been
thought of. I think its worth a lot of discussion. Any more thoughts Tim?

	One thing that you can forget about is colour cycling in 24 bit. At least
with the current generation of graphics cards. Colour cycling works in 8 bit
because the pallette is loaded into a hardware table on the graphics card
and the image data is mapped to RGB values by using the 8-bit pixel value
as an index into the CLUT (colour lookup table). Colour cycling is achieved
by shifting the pallette through the CLUT like a ring buffer. The image
data doesn't change. Once you get into 16 bit and 24 bit images, things
don't work this way anymore. Almost all 16 and 24 bit cards use the image
data directly. Someone told me the 3DO cards have 16 CLUT. Is this true?
If your using image data directly then colour cycling means scanning the
image for all occurances of each pixel value present and replacing it with
a new one. I guess you could do it in a single pass if you had a map of
replacement values but it would have to be a large table and it would be
done in software so you won't get the nice fast colour cycling that