—•— Working with UltraFractal —•

Course description: Working with Ultra Fractal - Janet Parke

$35.00

Ultra Fractal is a powerful, feature-rich, and extremely versatile fractal generator that allows the user to explore many types of fractals and to create amazing images. But it has, by nature, a very steep learning curve. This basic course is geared toward relative beginners and those who would like to learn a methodical approach to exploring and creating fractals.

This series of Ultra Fractal courses increases in intensity and many students find it advantageous to take a semester off after the Masking course to absorb the information and practice the techniques presented before proceeding to the Artistry course.

UltraFractal is an interactive course and may not just be audited. Students must actively participate by submitting homework in a timely manner. Failure to participate will result in losing access to the course material and forum and you will not be allowed to move on (unless extenuating circumstances have been discussed with the instructor).

Prerequisites:

Students must have Ultra Fractal 3, 4 or 5 installed on their computers (note that the new features in v.5 will not be addressed in this class). The student is expected to have worked through the tutorials in the Help file. Although this course will explore many basic concepts in depth, a familiarity with the UF workspace and user interface is presumed. Please be familiar with how to:

load fractal formulas (on the Formula tab)
load coloring algorithms (on the Inside and Outside tabs)
open the gradient editor
add, delete, and move layers
save and open parameter sets
save images as .ufr files

Lesson 1 -- Exploring the Mandelbrot set

How pixels are colored
Orbits
Iterations
Exploring the Mandelbrot coastline
Deep-zooming

Lesson 2 -- Spirals and Julia sets

More exploration of the Mandelbrot set
Spirals, spirals, everywhere!
The Julia switch
Creating some prototype structures

Lesson 3 -- Understanding the Gradient Editor and working with basic coloring formulas

The Smooth (Mandelbrot) coloring formula
Transfer functions
The Gaussian Integer coloring formula
Layers
RGB vs HSL
Fun with the Gradient Editor
Merge modes
Gradient opacity and transparency

Lesson 4 -- Exploring Rose Range Lite

Installing Rose Range Lite and its Help file
Using the formula's Help to explore its parameters
Working with the example parameter set and learning the Magnitude/Angle layering technique
Special merge layers
Rendering Rose Range Lite images

Lesson 5 -- Working with the Orbit Trap coloring formula

What are orbit traps?
Overall Parameters: Trap Mode, Trap Coloring, Threshold and Solid Color
Trap Shapes, Trap-specific parameters, Aspect Ratio, Center & Rotation
Trap Drift, Rotation Step, Skew, and Skew Step
Limited Iterations
Multiple Traps
The trap only Trap Mode
A method for creating

Lesson 6 -- Aesthetic Layering techniques

Working with layers
Layering with slight parameter changes
Averaging Layers technique
Luminosity/Color and Grayscale Shape layering
Pseudo-embossing
Rendering images to disk

Week 7 -- Final Thoughts & Bonus information

How to "un-busy" a spiral
Exploring the Mandelbrot starting point and power parameters
How the disks are numbered
Evolution of Spiral Structure

Links