A year or so ago I decided to produce a video based
on fractals of all kinds. The result - Fractal Dreams was published by Duet (Catalogue
no. Duet 006) with a sound track by Richard Veal and Simon Creagon. You may still
be able to get it in some Virgin or HMV stores. In case of difficulty
e-mail me. The 40 minute video is a mixture of colour cycling fractals of
different types, 3d animations using fractals as texture maps and landscape flythroughs.
The 3D animations were mainly done on Topas ( before the days of Lightwave on
the PC ) and Imagine. The landscape sequences were done on Vista Pro2. Most of
the fractals were originated on Fractool. The fractals were generated at PAL resolution
( 768 x 576 ) and saved as pcx files. The images were changed into targa files
and then loaded into Tips a paint programme which I use with the Vista card. Tips
has three versions - 32 bit,16 bit and 8 bit .I used the latter which enabled
me to adjust the colour mapping and run the colour cycling mode. This was varied
to suit the sequence and music. A great deal of co-operation took place between
the musicians and myself to obtain a good match of sound and image. The finale
managed to win me a second prize in an IBM competition a year or so ago. 
below are some stills from the video
The
follow-up to Fractal Dreams will be more challenging and work has already commenced.
There will be some images on the
Fractal Quest page
I
first became intrigued with fractals when a friend showed me an article in Scientific
American in 1980. I understood little about the maths involved but he images produced
by variations on the equation really caught my imagination and I was hooked. At
that time I was using an Amiga and I tried some programmes - eg Maths Art but
it was when I moved to a PC that more powerful bits of software became available.
I then used Fractint and Fractool, especially the latter. Now I tend to use some
of the new programms - eg - Ultra Fractal and Tierazon.
