I love finding and testing tutorials to see if some ideas can be drawn from them and used in different scenarios. Sometimes I will revisit older tutorials to see if I "missed" anything. Then I had to repay Fractal Explorer a visit because my initial exploration of it didn't go deep enough. And I found that right smack in the middle of our GIMP is a truly under-utilized gem, in Fractal Explorer (File - Render). It's GUI driven, you can see what you're doing, and you can make some truly awesome designs with very little effort.

Take my quick little image here, I titled it Angel Wars, for a current project I am working on for a local band's CD cover. The cover image involves demons and angels fighting in the heavens, I needed something to highlight that scenario.


This is only a rough draft because I intend to refine it, darken it, and make it fit the backdrop better. But the great thing is, I was able to save my FE preset for later use to tweak it further, later on. We can even share these presets as text files.

I was truly amazed at how unique this little plug-in really is. I've managed to create alien landscapes and space scenes with relative ease.

a good thing of the plugin is that may save preset

I am still finding things in Gimp i never knew existed
Usually it takes someone who never uses any other outside filters or addons.
They seem to be the folks that really understand Gimps capabilities.
The bottlecap tutorial in GFIG for example.Gimp has many programs within programs it seems.

Thanks for sharing the info Mahvin.

Fractal explorer wood.

Just messing with iterations makes me realize the awesome animation potential of Fractal Explorer. It would be cool to have a script that creates a series of iterations strictly for animations, like IWarp does.

Those images are gorgeous...I'd love to do those or even use some of those with permission...

I would just Note the people who made them on DA

I just noticed, I think the GIMP ones are edited in GIMP lol

I think I should learn to make my own...in fact I did do two today all by my little self

That second one is cool!

http://the-aposhack.deviantart.com/gallery/28954869
Those Text files, are called Params or parameters in the fractal world. Every Fractal in that gallery there, has the parameters included with them, so I haven't looked as to how you can put them into GIMP's Fractal explorer, or if there even the same program, but the Params are there, and there are more amazing Fractal Explorer Fractals

indeed! I'd love to figure out how to do this type of image in GIMP

love fractals that look like that!

The one I use is this version ofFractal Explorer I get a lot better results than the one that comes with Gimp.

Duh X D, I forgot about that fractal explorer, those Fractal Explorer ones probably were made in the one GMS linked

yeah, but it only runs on windows (as far as I can determine) and i really hate windows

I'd love it on Ubuntu

My purpose in pointing out Fractal Explorer in GIMP, wasn't to recommend it as a bonafide fractal designer, but to bring attention to how simple fractals can create scenery (sky, space, etc) and various other real-world items (like wood). And it's right there in GIMP, two clicks away. It works for me.

If you want "out of this world" fractals you're better off using Fractive, Xaos, the stand-alone Fractal Explorer (Windows). I don't care for Apophysis, it's too technical to use for my tastes, but other people may like it.

Fractal Explorer (the Windows version) runs in Wine, but its rendering time is seriously limited if you have less than 4 gig of RAM. It has a serious laggy delay when rendering for me on the laptop (2 gig), but that problem is non-existent on my 8 gig desktop.

I've got Xaos and Fyre so I am not without some fractal love

but like money, good books and GIMP scripts, you can never have TOO many fractal programs

Well I just downloaded Fractal Explorer for mac...lets see what transpires!

Not suitably impressive to me but maybe I need to learn more about it.

I hope you have lots of RAM for rendering

I agree wholeheartedly, completely, and all that stuff. I only use it and submitted it because of the results I get make it worth it. I haven't tried it in wine yet.

Your point about using Gimp's FE is well taken, i hadn't used it that way before. I tried Xaos and it didn't impress me. Apophysis did impress me, a lot, but time after time i tried and can't get anywhere the results i've seen in their galleries Example1 Example2 Example3. I have gotten good results with fYre but my favorite is still FE.