Revision as of 01:52, 9 May 2015

About Chaotica

Chaotica is an advanced fractal-software, which was designed to create and render flame-fractals in the best quality possible. It creates brilliant images with rich colors and sharp details in little time, and also supports fractal-animations, with very nice motion-blur-effects. Being a commercial product, it is developed and maintained by Glare Technologies. For a more comprehensive overview over the features please visit the official site chaoticafractals.com.

Integration into JWildfire

In the current state, Chaotica clearly focuses on the rendering and has a rather minimal user-interface to design and manage flames. This makes it a perfect candidate for an integration into other programs which may benefit from the truly amazingly fast and high-quality-renderer. Additionally, it uses only a very decent amount of memory, launches very quickly and (per default) occupies not much of the screen, so that the integration really can feel smooth.

Please note, that this integration is not meant to replace the JWildfire-renderer, not now and not in future versions. It is just an additional option to be able to deliver the best possible results in a fair amount of time.

Chaotica Community

https://www.facebook.com/chaoticafractals
https://www.facebook.com/groups/chaotica

Feature differences (examples)

But, nothing comes without a cost. So, we can't just export all of our flames to Chaotica and become happy by having rendered them in better quality in less time. Both programs, JWildfire and Chaotica, are very different, and transfering flame-parameters between them is actually a very challenging task. But, many of those differences are not a fault, or something similar, which may be eventually "solved", many differences are influenced by design, and they will remain.

Some examples:

1. Chaotica currently does not support any (Pseudo)3D-feature, so all the 3D-stuff in JWildfire will not translate. Or in simple words: Fractals in Chaotica are always 2D
2. JWildfire does not support the loading of any external Apophysis-plugins (and has all plugins integrated), where Chaotica supports both, internal and external plugins. This may lead to different behaviour in certain cases, because there is no garuantee that a certain plugin with the name X will behave in all programs the same. Apo-Plugins were often created in Delphi or C, while JWildfire-plugins are written in Java, and Chaotica probably uses some C-dialect.
3. In animations, Chaotica is designed to work on a time-basis, while JWildfire works one a frame-basis (which can be translated in each other, of course).
4. While Chaotica can have any variation as "post_" or "pre_"-variation, JWildfire still uses the Apophysis-approach to decide the priority by name (because of compatiblity reasons)
5. Chaotica and JWildfire use different models for applying affine transforms
6. Anti-Aliasing works different in both program

The JWildfire-Chaotica-Bridge

Because of the many differences between JWildfire and Chaotica, exchanging flames between them is a rather challenging task, which is performed by a special layer of software: the JWildfire-Chaotica-Bridge.

Components of the Bridge

The JWildfire-Chaotica-Bridge consists of the following components:

1. Chaotica-Launcher: translates the current fractal of the Main-Editor into the Chaotica-format and launches Chaotica to render the translated flame
2. Chaotica-Plugin-Translator: translates the names of certain plugins and plugin-parameters from JWildfire to Chaotica.
   1. Exchanges certain 3D-plugins by 2D-plugins, e.g. "blade3D" ist translated into "blade", because "blade" works the same when the fractal is in 2D.
   2. Removes plugins which can not work by design, e.g. "inflateZ_1", which is a displacement into z-directorion, which would have no effect at all
   3. Forces to use some JWildfire-specific plugins to force that the result looks the same, e.g. renaming "swirl" into "swirl_wf"
   4. Replacing certain unavailable plugins by replacements which work as much the same as possible, e.g. replacing "dcztransl" by "linear"
3. JWildfire-Chaotica-Plugin-Pack: contains about 150 external plugins in Apo-format to hepl to translate as many flames from JWildfire to Chaotica as possible. They are made from JWildfire-code and are intended to work the same as the plugins with the same name in JWildfire. Currently they are only available in 64 Bit by design.

Using all of this components, the bridge can currently handle/translate about 300 plugins.

1. Chaotica-MotionCurve-Translator: transfers the MotionCurves designed in JWildfire to the Chaotica
2. Chaotica-Bridge-Random-Flame-Generator: A meta-random-flame-generator which uses other flame-random-generators and the Chaotica-Plugin-Translator to create flames which will probably translate well to Chaotica

Supported Platforms and Chaotica-Versions

Because both JWildfire and Chaotica are continously evolving, and both programs are available on many different platforms/architectures, it is impossible to test and support any combination of versions/platforms.

Windows 64 Bit

This is (currently) the only supported platform. You are welcome to try others, but you are on your own. At least the plugin-pack is only available for Windows 64 Bit yet

On JWildfire-side, you should use Java7 or higher (Java 8 is not required), and be sure to use a 64 Bit Java, not the default one which comes with your browser.

On Chaotica-side any version since 1.5.5 should work, be sure to use the Windows 64 Bit version

Installation

JWildfire-side

Install the latest JWildfire-version from the official site and check the option "Chaotica-plugins"

Chaotica-side

1. Download Chaotica (64 Bit Windows) and install it on any location.
2. Copy the plugins from the JWildfire installation (folder "plugins" inside installation-directory) into the plugins-folder of Chaotica (also folder "plugins" inside installation-directory)
3. Create a temporary directory for exchanging flames, e.g. "D:\JWF-Chaotica-flames"

Configure JWildfire

1. Launch JWildfire and open the Preferences-Window
2. Set the value of the property tinaIntegrationChaoticaDrawer to the actual path of your Chaotica-installation, e.g. "C:\Program Files\Chaotica"
3. Set the value of the property Set tinaIntegrationChaoticaFlameDrawer to the path you created to exchange flame-files, e.g. "D:\JWF-Chaotica-flames"

Getting started

1. Start JWildfire
2. Choose the random-flame-generator Chaotica Bridge and press the Random batch-button
3. Double-click at a flame at your choice to load it into the main editor
4. Choose the desired resolution-profile (the fractal is rendered at this size in Chaotica)
5. Click at the Chaotica-Bridge-button at the right side of the preview area
6. If Chaotica launches properly, but you get a black/unwanted fractal, the fractal may use a plugin which is still not available. In this case, please chose another flame, we are working on providing all plugins, but this takes time.