JWildfire news & patch notes

It took longer than it should have been, but today I'm relasing JWildfire version 9.0! There are many cool additions regarding variations, made by Brad Stefanov, Rick Sidwell and Whitaker Courtney. Thanks a bunch! For example, there is now some kind of intelligent randomization of variation parameters. And, I added support for JWildfireSwan as the the official GPU-rendering backend for JWildfire.While Fractal Architect and FARender is discontinued, you may use FARender as long as it works for you, though. But, it will not receive any updates anymore, especially not for new CUDA-versions. The new rendering solution is much more flexible and powerful, both in terms of performanceand compatibility. And, it works on any major device, including macOS and Linux, while FARender only works on Windows and with NVIDIA devices. And of course, I have much more control over the source code, and can fix problems much more easily. And, adding more features on both sides and making the rendering more compatible over time will be just a natural process.Unlike FARender, integration of the swan renderer is done via REST, so Swan only needs to be started once and can then be used as a rendering server. This leads to a much better user experience, because it has not to be started again for each rendering job.To enable this feature, you have first to enable the setting "useSwanForGpuRendering" in thePreferences. Then, specify the path to the Swan executable in the setting "swanInstallationPath" (here have only to specify the folder, where the executable is located, not the executable itself).You can also change the port which is used for communication via the setting "swanApiPort",but this is optional. Restart JWildfire and it should open up JWildfireSwan with enabled REST-API.You can ignore the Swan-interface and leave it in the background. When you now render an image with the GPU-option, the rendering is delegated to Swan. This works both in the main editor and in thebatch-renderer. So, you may use Swan to render frames for animations as well.(You can also direcly export flames to Swan via the clipboard and render them there, of course. ) Complete changelog: - added support for JWildfireSwan as the the official GPU-rendering backend for JWildfire. - new variation randomize button, which creates a guided random set of parameters for the selected variation, this way you can explore the parameter space of a variation in a more controlled way. This nice feature, along with the enhancements to the variations themselves, was implemented by Rick Sidwell - new variations by Brad Stefanov and Rick Sidwell: - quad - ringtile - whirligig - ringer - rings3 - kifs3d - tess_shape - juliascopePlus - cactusGlobe - geometricPrimitives - cell3D - boxfold - conicalSpiral - drunkenTiles - shapeWarp - glynnSim2B - romanesco - naturalFoam - deStijl - meeple - flora - chaosCubes - polySurf - multi_ifs - mandelbox2D - camouflage - point_mirror_symmetry - flame_bulb - prepost_blob - mobiqN - new "Julian Recurrenceplot" script, created by Rick Sidwell - some references/documentation to certain variations, implemented by Rick Sidwell: - recurrenceplot - taprats - wangtiles - hamid - isosfplot3d - knots3d - lsystem3D - obj_mesh_primitive - parplot2d - polarplot2d - sattractor3d - yplot2d - yplot3d - auger - barycentroid - hexnix3D - dc_cylinder - dc_perlin - falloff3 - post_smartcrop - waved3b - xheart - juliascopePlus - changes/bug fixes to the following variations: - lsystem3D_js - rosoni - post_mandel*_crop and other fractal crop variations - bulge - knots3D - pre_affine3D and psot_affine3D - optimizations to SDF solid variations, like cappedcone3D

V8.50 (24.12.2023) - introducing a new type of transform: background transforms. - a background transform calculates a layer of a background, typically using one of the dc-type of variations - this way you can add very interesting backgrounds which also evaluate very fast (in comparison to the "classical iterations") - the intensity ("brightness") of the background is controlled by the "weight" parameter of the background transform - use the small "B"-button (which is located right of the "Final"-transform-button) to add a random background transform to the current layer - currently, about 60 variations support background transforms - please note, that you can also combine them with regular "pre_"-type-variations - you can make most variations to work as a "pre_"-type-variation in the user-interface by pressing the small "pre"-buttons - this way you can apply interesting deform-effects to your backgrounds - background-transforms can also be animated like regular transforms - you can control the position, size and orientation by changing the affine-part of the background transform ("triangles") - please note that this affine-transform is applied to the coordinates of the background - so it appears somewhat like an inverse transform - e.g. moving to the right, will move the background to the left - e.g. scaling down the triangle will zoom into the background, etc. - currently, the following variations support background-transforms directly: colormap_wf, dc_acrilic, dc_apollonian, dc_booleans, dc_cairotiles, dc_circlesblue, dc_circuits, dc_code, dc_ducks, dc_fingerprint, dc_fractaldots, dc_fractcolor, dc_gabornoise, dc_glypho, dc_gmandelbroot, dc_grid3D, dc_hexagons, dc_hoshi, dc_hyperbolictile, dc_inversion, dc_kaleidocomplex, dc_kaleidoscopic, dc_kaliset, dc_kaliset2, dc_layers, dc_linear, dc_mandala, dc_mandbrot, dc_mandelbox2D, dc_menger, dc_moebiuslog, dc_pentatiles, dc_perlin, dc_poincaredisc, dc_portal, dc_quadtree, dc_randomoctree, dc_rotations, dc_spacefold, dc_squares, dc_starsfield, dc_sunflower, dc_tesla, dc_tree, dc_triantess, dc_truchet, dc_turbulence, dc_voronoise, dc_vortex, dc_warping, dc_worley, f_complex, fract_dragon_wf, fract_formula_julia_wf, fract_formula_mand_wf, fract_julia_wf, fract_mandelbrot_wf, fract_meteors_wf, fract_pearls_wf, fract_salamander_wf, iconattractor_js, swirl3D_wf - GPU render now also supports transparency - new "mobius_dragon_3D"-variation by Whittaker Courtney, with added GPU-support - variation-filter in the user interface ("Background transform"), which shows only variations which are suitable for background transforms - new RANDOM_BACKGROUND-mutation to add background-transforms, which is available both in the "Quick Mutations"-tab and the MutaGen-window as well - new "Flame with Background"-random-flame-generator to generate flames with background-transforms - GPU render now supports bg transforms (by compositing - GPU render now supports background images and background gradients (by compositing) - the "shift"-parameter of the gradient can now be easilier be animate to created color-cycling animations (as suggested by Hugo Orosz) - fixed an internal matrix-multiplicatiopn-bug, reported by Brenda661 - fixed a bug regarding to saving the window-position of the Easy Movie Maker, as reported by Hugo Orosz - restored the internal "TM*" scripts (which got lost due to unknown reason) - on GPU the xcolorshift, ycolorshift, and zcolorshift variables now also work with post_mirror, as reported by Brad Stefanov - removed the parameter tinaRealtimePreviewIdleAmount, which caused more problem than it was helpful - some optimizations, especially to the realtime-preview

List of changes: -upgraded the GPU render to CUDA 11.8, works also on NVIDIA 4xxx GPU’s now -new “Underwater”-random-flame-generator, most generated flames also work well with the GPU render -new “RANDOM_BG_COLOR”-mutation, makes it easy to play with different backgrounds for “Underwater”-flames -fixed a bug in the GPU-implementation of “loonie2” -added a non-ugly flame for selftest of the gpu render (selftest.bat in the FARenderJWF-folder) -adjusted the variation-type of many variations, leading to better random-flames in some cases -slightly improved the quality of various random-flame-generators -when using GPU render, automatically convert background-gradients to an average background color (because GPU render currently only supports a single background color)

-upgraded the WIX- and jpackage-versions, so this is only a technical update

-new "cell2"-variation by Brad Stefanov (was already included in 8.00 but did not make it into the release notes) -fixed a bug in the math library which causes some variations to fail which used trigonometric functions with large arguments (e.g. "phoenix_julia") -added a check for path-settings which contain space-characters and display a warning in this case - this check can be skipped by enabling the property "skipPathCheckAtStartup" in the Preferences -fixed calculation of camera angle of the CUDA-renderer (was off when roll was not zero) -added a context-menu to the resources-dialog for editing text (copy, cut, paste) -made the properties-editor in the Preferences-window more accessible, increased the size of the button for selecting folders -exchanged the four mutation-trend-combo-boxes in the MutaGen by a single combobox. This allows to select the trend for all four mutations with one click. Having four separate combo-boxed gave too much control where it is not needed. -alphabetic sorting of gradients and scripts inside of their tree-views -removed the parameters "X" and "Y" of "circleLinear" which were never used -removed the parameter "scale_t" of "heart_wf" which was never used -changed the labels of the checkboxes inside the profile-dialogs to be also visible when the controls are inactive -fixed a problem with the undo-manager which caused the undo-button be inactive even if they where undo-steps available -fixed a problem where sending a flame to the batch-renderer did not cause to render the preview -fixed a bug which an InvalidOutputStream -error on macOS when creating voxel-stacks -fixed a bug which an InvalidOutputStream -error on macOS when creating a quilt-render

V8.00 (19.02.2023) - huge improvements in solid rendering, hence the big change in version number: -now it feels like it should have from the start, i.e. it's fun to use -needs less render time (about 66%) -quicker response in the preview-render -more accurate calculation of normal vectors -more accurate lighting calculation -needs less spatial oversampling in order to get clear details in many cases -there are three other sizes of shadow maps available -fixed an old bug which caused the shadow direction differing from the light direction -much faster tone-mapping (the final phase of rendering) -use reduced shadow-map size when rendering (smaller) previews to save memory -new "pre_affine3D"- and "post_affine3D"-variations for more precise control over affine transforms in 3D space -all solid-random-flame-generators now support many more base-shapes - new "Solid (recursive)"-random-flame-generator to generate simple but nice solid flames (thanks Brad for the name suggestion) - fixed a bug which prevented entering of values into number-fields manually in some cases - increased the default value of tinaRealtimePreviewIdleAmount (which causes less idling and smoother realtime-preview)) - changed the locale of number-fields to US, so that the decimal separator is always a dot (".") - added "hourglass3D"-variation as suggested at the Facebook-group - added "Yummy Gnarls BS"-script, made by Brad Stefanov http://blog.overwhale.com/wp-content/gallery/solid-flame-fractals/wallpaper_solid_snails_2023.jpg

fixed a bug with the display-zoom when the property tinaLegacyRealtimePreview was active

-fixed a bug in GPU render which did miscalulate the size of the final images

- added the parameters "rnd_brush_seed", "rnd_brush_min_count" and "rnd_brush_max_count" to the "brush_stokes_wf"-variation in order to simplify the usage of this variation inside scripts - added the concept of readonly-resource-parameters to variations, which can be used to display informations. They look like regular parameters, but clicking at the gear symbol opens a a document - added brush_strokes_jwf_brushes.pdf-reference-document which shows the available brushes of the "brush_stokes_wf"-variation - added the brush_strokes_jwf_brushes.pdf-reference-document as readonly-resource "brushes_reference" to the "brush_stokes_wf"-variation - several optimizations

V7.50 (24.12.2022) - new powerful "brush_stokes_wf"-variation which helps to apply a painterly look to your fractals - includes a lot of logic and 70 brush-presets, which may be combined freely - due to its complexity it is not available on GPU yet - new "Painterly"-random-generator which utilizes this variation - new "Painterly Style"-mutation, which is available both in the "Quick Mutations"-tab and the MutaGen-window as well - new "BRUSH_STROKE"-Bokeh-style - re-implemented the the realtime-refresh of the flame-previw for editing. It should work more smooth with less flickering and should require less CPU-time. - you can adjust the amount of idle CPU-time in the Preferences-window by changing the property tinaRealtimePreviewIdleAmount (you can also find more information about this property into the Preferences-window by clicking at this property) - in case, it does not work well for you or you just prefer the old behaviour, you can turn on the previous behaviour by enabling the property tinaLegacyRealtimePreview in the Prefs - mark/unmark variations as favourites: - you may now mark any variaton as favourite by just clicking a small button next to it - there is an additional favourite-filter-button which then only dispalys variations which are markes as favourites - this works together with variation-profiles and the variation-profiles-filter, but can be used in a more dynamic fashion, e.g., you must not enter a popup window to edit favourites - added more variations to the pool of candidates which are using in random-flames - adjusted the initial value-ranges in he curve-editor to be more convenient - fixed a problem with the undo manager which allowed to go too much backward in undo-history - made the internal handling of the property "pixelsPerUnit" more consistent (even if this sounds like a minor feature it caused a lot of internal changes, but also simplifications) - it allows proper animation of this property, finally - it also affects and improves results of random-flame-generators - improved the results of the "Phoenix"-random-flame-generator - minor improvements to other random-flame-generators as well, due to the change of internal resolution - upgraded (internally) to Java 19 - fixed a bug in the internal scripts "Bwraps and bubbles" and "Bwraps-bubble-Julian2", which prevented the scripts to run - some optimizations to the realtime-render-preview in the main editor - created a reusable library (maven-artifact) which contains the main functionality and the CLI: org.jwildfire:jwildfire-lib - this library will be used first in JWildfireSwan - lots of refactoring and restandardisation

This update introduces the new CLI, which allows to execute functions of the software without the user-interface. It is currently limited to rendering and to generating random flames. Please see the users manual for more details.

- option to generate z-buffers for regular flames. While this option is limited and may not work well on many flames, it may help to generate awesome effects for certain flames. Also available with GPU-rendering. - motion-curve-editor: when using an mp3-file as input you may have an option to chose a list of of frequency-bands, rather then only one single frequency band. When generating the motion curve, the average of all the selected bands is generated. This give a particular band more importance you may add it multiple times. - added support for more variations on GPU. Thanks to Jesus Sosa for your help! We now have about 660 variations which are supported on GPU! - minor change to the calculation of dof on GPU - the default setting for "ZBuffer filename" is now "name_depth" (instead of "zbuf_name") - fixed: Dancing-Flames-module could not write flame-files (when running inside sandbox) - fixed: crackle-variation did not work on GPU - fixed: Unicode-characters are now handled correctly in loading/storing the settings. This fixes a very crazy bug which could lead to a huge growth of the Preferences-file, which then would cause a major slowdown of te application. Due to encoding errors all unicode-characters where somewhat duplicated at each start of the application. This started harmless, but would become very dramatic (like growth of water lilies on a pond)

fixed an overflow-error on cellular noise on GPU

- Re-implementation of GPU-rendering (PLEASE NOTE: this works only on Windows and requires a modern NVIDIA graphics card) In Version 6.50 GPU rendering was VERY limited because it used only the internal pre-defined variation set for "classic" flam3-variations. There is also some built-in "3d-standard set" of variations (which never worked for me). But even with this set of variations the usage would be very limited, because mayn of these built-in variations work slightly different or did not work at all. It would always be impossible to get predictable results, which is often very important for artistic work. - So, I re-implemented GPU-rendering in a fundamental way: - it is still using FAEngine as GPU-gateway, but most of the GPU-code is actually JWildfire-specific - most of the actual GPU code is provided by JWildfire during runtime and compiled and executed during FAEngine on the GPU It would be impossible to create a variation set which contains all gpu-supported variations. They would be too many, and compilation at the device would fail or even crash the whole system. Therefore, JWildfire always sends only the code to FAEngine which is actaully required. This makes the rendering startup for each flame a little bit slower (and does not allow for a realtime-display), but actually works very good and reliable) - uses a special binary (FARenderJWF) and and custom kernel which already provides many of JWildfire's features - using CUDA instead of OpenCl, so AMD devices are no more supported. I had to choose between supporting more devices or supporting more possible features (and a better developer speed), therefore I switched to CUDA. - only this gives actual control over the behaviour of variations and allows us to implement features which are not supported naturally by FAEngine - currently supported features: - support for about 550 variations (of a total of 850) - motion blur - some of the additional color balancing options - 3d-affine-transformations ("XY"-, "YZ"-, "ZX"-buttons) - weighting fields - custom variations - currently not supported: - layers - local gamma effects - solid rendering - supported platform: only Windows10 + CUDA-capable graphics card, e.g. NVIDIA 1060 or better - Please note, that the GPU renderer is not a replacement for the CPU renderer. It is just an additional toy. - there will always be features which are not possible on GPU (for example, probably, sub-flames). - there will be platforms, where it will be never supported - all calculations on GPU are done using single precision, while CPU uses double precision. And some mathematical functions on GPU are just approximations in cotrast to the more precise CPU-variants. So, likely, there will be differences, often very small, but they will there. - Please also note: the more features you use, the more code is created, compiled and executed. Especially, weighting-fields are very expensive in comparison to other features. At higher resolution the GPU render will always be faster. But, it is possible, that a small preview on GPU takes more time than a CPU render. This is due to the complicated process to invoke a GPU render. - added a new GPU-mode-button in the main editor. If enabled, it has the following functions: - full preview uses GPU rendering - random-flame-generators try to avoid to use variations which are not supported by GPU - new option tinaGpuModeDefaultEnabled in the Preferences to activate the GPU-mode per default - there is an implicit GPU-filter for the list of variations, so when creating new fractals you can select only variations which are supported on GPU - added a new tab in the GPU renderer for viewing the generated gpu-flame-parameters - displaying the name of variations where no code could be found - added a new option to enable automatic synchronization of changes between the Main Editor and GPU renderer - added a "send flame to GPU render"-button in the main editor - added a "Disable Denoiser"-button in the Batch-renderer-window to easily turn off all post-denoising (usually, when using GPU rendering) - GPU-rendering in Batch-rendering is per default on, when GPU rendering is available - Disabling of post-denoiser is also per default on, when GPU rendering is available - included LogBack as standard-library for logging error-messages and debug-information (the log-file is saved as JWildfire.log in your home drawer) - added a new global window ("Message log") for showing the messages of the current session - fixed a bug which occurred when importing a flame into the Easy Movie Maker: when the window was too small for holding the preview, the import failed - omitting empty motion curves when writing flames to file or clipboard - removed support for the old FACLRender (which had no special support for JWF and works very limited together with JWildfire) together with the info-window under Help->GPU rendering (please see the users manual for questions regarding GPU rendering) - slighlty increased the "diversity" of random flame generators - the AI-Post-Denoiser under GPU rendering is turned off by default - improved the appearance of the WField-tab - new white-noise-type for weighting fields (not very spectacular, but interesting some times, though) - added the cell-value-type as possible return-type for cellular noise in weighting fields - added a strength-parameter to Quick mutation (which currently works not very predictable/well) - new option to disable ai-based post-denoisers on GPU renders, but to keep the settings for CPU renders at the same time - fixed a fft-related problem with the import of mp3-files in the motion-curves-editor - improved the "Duckies"-random-flame-generator - new variations: - ovoid by Rob Richards - post_point_crop by Whittaker Courtney - mobius3D_with_inverse by CozyG - hole - post_flatten and pre_flatten - pre_disc - post_rotate_z - oak_leaf - maple_leaf - japanese_maple_leaf - new family of variations by Jesus Sosa: Symmetries band & network groups variations - Symmetry Band Groups 1 to 7 variations: sym_bg1, sym_bg2, sym_bg3, sym_bg4, sym_bg5, sym_bg6, sym_bg7 - Symmetry Network Group 1 to 17 variations: sym_ng1, sym_ng2, sym_ng3, sym_ng4, sym_ng5, sym_ng6, sym_ng7, sym_ng8, sym_ng9, sym_ng10, sym_ng11, sym_ng12, sym_ng13, sym_ng14, sym_ng15, sym_ng16, sym_ng17. - behaviour of some variations fixed: the contribution of these was not added to the variation current group, but was overriding all other contributions of the current group: - seashell3D - clifford_js - post_depth - fixed the naming of some parameters (i.e., replaced spaces by underscore) of the following variations: - atan2_spirals - seashell3D - inverted_julia variation - corners - fixed the following variations in order to correctly support the "Preserve Z"-setting: - bsplit - fixed a bad behaviour of the dinis_surface_wf variation - the parameter "filled" of the following variations is now a probability, rather than a switch: - cannabiscurve_wf - cloverleaf_wf - rose_wf - changed the initialization behaviour of the w-, x-, y- and z-variation: lituus is initialized to 0 instead to a random number - changed the behaviour of post_axis_symmetry_wf and post_mirror_wf so that it only adds a contribution when the amount-parameter is not equal to zero, for consistency reasons - improved the gnarl-random-flame-generators to also use waves22, waves23, waves4, waves42 and vibration2 to create more interesting variations of the standard-gnarls

V6.50 (11.04.2021) - Introducing variation-filters, based on variation-profiles and variation-types. They will improve usability a lot by simplifying the selection of variations/"plugins" by selecting and combining variation-types. The variation-types are internally defined and connected to the variation by the variation author. A variation may have any number of variation-types. e.g. "blur3d" is both of type BLUR and 3D. Profiles are not restricted to the use of variation-types, you may also create profile containing a list of any variations. For example. you can create a profile which contains well-proved variations to use inside a splits-elliptic-setup. You can also exclude variations. You may combine up to two profiles. E.g. to combine your own profile with the internal categories, like "Baseshape". E.g., when you chose your own profile together with the predefined "Baseshape", you get only base-shape-variations from your list. (a "Baseshape" is a variation which creates a shape/fractal on its own, like "square") - This is the first version of an official user manual. Thanks to Brad Stefanov, D. Aaron Sawyer, Nancy Pierce, my wife Patricia Maschke and Rick Sidwell for reviewing it! Because it is also a public project, you can view the latest version of the manual always directly on GitHub: https://github.com/thargor6/JWildfire/blob/master/manual/src/docs/asciidoc/JWildfire_manual.adoc The final manual can be reached from within the program under the "Help -> User manual" or in the file system inside the lib-subfolder (JWildfire_manual.pdf). - ply/PointCloud-export now generates two additional fields: pscale and intensity - new property tinaDefaultNewFlameTitle where you can set a default flame title which is assigned when you create a new flame by using the "New from Scratch"-button - new property specialMacOsFileHandling in the Preferences to enable special file handling for newer versions of macOS. The default behavior on all platforms is to use the standard Java file dialogs. On macOS, these only allow access within the sandbox. This makes it difficult to share files between JWildfire and other apps. If you enable this option, JWildfire uses native file dialogs on macOS. However, this comes at the price of having to reconfirm each first access to a folder. This new option is enabled by default. - folder-parameters in the Preferences (e.g. gradient-folder) can now be entered manually or selected by using a folder-dialog - added Alt-F shortcut for Fine edit, by Rick Sidwell - new variations -bulge, -fresnel, -tunnel, -kaleidoimg, -dc_portal, -kaplan, -dc_gmandelbroot by by Jesus Sosa -crop_mandelbulb3d, -crop_mandelbox3d by Whittaker Courtney -post_aexion_crop, -post_benesi_crop, -post_asurf_crop, -post_bristorbrot_crop, -post_bulbtorus_crop, -post_coastalbrot_crop by by Jesus Sosa - new internal scripts - "Tile Maker" (which is a whole family of scripts) by Missy Gainer - "Yummy Gnarls" by Brad Stefanov - improved the "Affine3D"-random-flame-generator - slightly improved the speed of "glsl_"- and similar variations - slightly improved the speed when chosing a random variation (from within a random-flame-generator or Mutation) - moved the "ZBuffer"-subtab from the "DOF / Bokeh"-tab to the "3D rendering"-tab - removed the advanced code-editor (using jsyntaxpane-1.1.5), which was not properly working in Java 15 (and honestly, was never working very well). Accordingly, the properties tinaAdvancedCodeEditorColorFix, tinaAdvancedCodeEditorFontSize and tinaAdvancedCodeEditor where removed from the Preferences. Recommended Alternative: use Visual Studio Code for editing complex scripts (https://code.visualstudio.com/download) - removed the "Variations settings"-window which was superseded by the new variation profiles - flame-morphing now also takes into account post-symmetry - added motion-curves for post-symmetry-related settings - added a new mode variable to the glitchy2-variation - fix: file dialogs in macOS Mojave now are the native file dialogs, so you can access files outside the sandbox - fix: a bug regarding macOS which prevented that path-settings where correctly saved in the Preferences - fix: name of parameter "type" was wrong in "cut_booleans"-variation, by Brad Stefanov - fix: QuickMutations now inherit the zoom-factor, quality and spatial oversampling settings form the original flame - fix: regarding z-coordinate to tqmirror-variation, by Brad Stefanov - fix: regarding of priority in the post_falloff2-variation - fix: initialize width and height for new flames, by Rick Sidwell - fix: a bug where changing a post-affine-transformation-value was not properly updated and the change was lost when saving and re-loading the flame - fix: sets a default font for the UI during early startup. On macOS Big Sur some parts of the UI were reported to use a strange font sometimes. - fix: added support for PreserveZ in the dc_carpet-variation, by Brad Stefanov