FlameFractalTutorial01

Objective of this tutorial

In this tutorial we want to show the basic editing-functions of flames, i.e. creating and moving of transforms, often referred as "triangles".

Start the editor and a blank flame

First, start JWildfire, open the Fractal-flames-editor (if not already open), and resize and move the window so that you feel comfortable with the size and postion of the main-editor-area (the large black area).

Press the New from scratch-button to create a new fractal. A new fractal always starts empty, i.e. the display show only the background color.

Add the first transform

Press the Add-button at the Transformations-tab to add your first transform. A new entry in the transformations-table should appear, together with a triangle-symbol in the main-editor area, and some noise in the background of the editor (the current state of the flame-fractal)

Realtime-editing

The triangle you see in the main-editor are control for the transforms making your fractal. Each flame-fractal contains at least one transform, usually at least two. For better understanding how those transforms work it is recommended to play with at least two of them.

You can manipulate transforms in realtime in three ways:

1. move them: you will see that this also affects the fractal image in a way that certain parts are moved
2. rotate them: this will cause some parts to get rotated in some way
3. size them: this is very important: sizing is not only for conventional sizing, the sizing of a transform will decide if you get an image or not, at all.

Move

Just hold the left mouse-button and drag your mouse to move a transform

Rotate

Just hold the right mouse-button and drag your mouse to rotate a transform

Size

Just either hold the middle mouse-button and drag your mouse or use the mouse-wheel to size a transform

Make it a fractal: add a second transform

As mentioned before, it is recommended to start always with two transform when playing with flame-fractals. So let's add a nother transform by pressing the Add-button at the Transformations-tab. The transformations-table should now show two rows, and the main-editor should show another triangle to control the newly added transform

Select a certain transform

You now can see that there a active and inactive controls. The editing always affects the active transform. You can select a certain transform by two ways:

1. Click at the control (triangle) in the main-editor
2. Select it's row in the transformations-table

Active controls are drawn solid, inactive controils are drawn dashed.

Explore the space for interesting shapes

You probably have nothing interesting (in terms of a fractal image), even if we now have two transforms. Just play with the second transform like you did with the first one. Draw the control, rotate it, size it (please increase size only slightly if you increase size at all, otherwise it could happen that you don't get a stable image at all, we will come to this later).

Here are some examples (achieved only by using the steps described above)

Conclusion

Even if we only added two transforms and slightly modified them by dragging the mouse, we have finally entered a place of endless possibilities. Furthermore, we can change the type of transforms (now we used the most simple type of "formula"), add more of them, change the colors, change the viewport, ...