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FarDareisMai —
Parameters Explained
Published: 2007-08-01 15:54:29 +0000 UTC; Views: 8915; Favourites: 84; Downloads: 246
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Description
Hopefully, this will explain what exactly parameters are, why we believe that copying them IS art theft, and the reason for all the ruckus.Note: The details of the tut, such as the .upr file extension, the copying and pasting, and all the screenshots are specific to Ultra Fractal. However, the idea behind the tut--that parameters are files and therefore copyrighted--extends to all fractal programs.
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Comments: 94
Fascinating. I love your take on an oft ignored controversy. "128 as a bailout" could disrupt the foundations of the Western world as we know it.
On a more serious side, I'm still a bloody newbie to really getting Apophysis to generate more than simplistic blah images. Sometimes I get totally lost, adding probably too many triangles and distortions to make anything coherent. What is meant when you say it is possible to copy the parameter text into the program? Once that is done, do the parameters show up in the slider numbers thus the user is able to alter them?
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ok well this explains some things; I've seen people share their parameters for experimentation.
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Included within my News Article for Project Educate [link] Thanks for sharing
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i think i lol-ed loudly enought for my mom to frown at me at the "THIEF" part.
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Just to let you know I featured your work in an article about fractal: [link]
Thank you for sharing your work!
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I have to say I am very new to all the digital arts, but after just seeing fractal art for the first time I can't see how anyone can say it is not art. Kudos to all who are able to take all these shapes and setting and layers and turn ordinary shapes into gorgeous pieces that exceed the boundaries of normal art. I have truly learned something in the past two days on this site and I think that this type of art is truly amazing. From what I have seen it takes patience and a very good eye.
I know I will look forward to exploring this branch of the art tree a little more. I may never be able to understand how it is done, but that does not diminish the beauty.
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I read this as someone who loves fractals but doesn't know much about them yet even though I've dabbled with a couple different programs. I expected to read something I wouldn't understand, something complex, something only "fractalists" would understand from what I was seeing in the comments. But it is pretty damn straightforward and makes perfect sense. I don't see how somebody wouldn't understand this...
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I don't "do" fractals generally, and have been oblivious to this apparent storm surrounding paramaters...
...but I understood this perfectly, and agree that "parameters" are no different to the .c4d scenes I save before rendering a scene.
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Would help if I had correctly spelled "parameters" correctly the first time. Oh for an edit button.
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Congrats on the DD. I didnt spot it earlier 
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After reading more about fractal art and seeing this, I still am a little confused about the parameters concept thing. Is it similar to HTML (not how you make it, but more of the concept as a file and not "program settings")? I mean, in HTML, you have the codes that you type, but overall, the full thing is a file that is seen as a webpage and not a whole bunch of codes. I'm just trying to relate the whole parameters thing with something that I understand more, so if I'm totally off, please let me know.
Thanks! And congrats on making the DD!
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No, anctually, you are not off at all. That is a very good explination of what a parameter is. It is scripting, just like HTML. Something like codes are used in the parameters to tell the program how to make the image. Much the same as HTML codes telling the browser how to display the webpage that those codes were used to create. So if HTML can be copyrighted, shouldn't parameters be able to be copyrighted?
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Yes, I agree. Parameters should be able to be copyrighted. I mean, even if the argument of fractals not being artwork went on forever, there's still the argument of stolen information/material. If you think about it like java programming, there are many ways to write code to produce the same program, but if that coding is found to be too similar to another person's coding, then it's not accepted. Schools, colleges, universities, etc. usually withhold credit if it is a class assignment, and many businesses don't hire that sort of thing for fear of being sued. So if it is so wrong to steal that kind of information, why wouldn't it be wrong to steal parameters?
But I digress. I think this matter has already been pretty much solved and is over with.
Thank you so much! I get it now!!! Heh heh heh! (It probably would have been way easier to understand if I knew more about fractals themselves....)
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The problem has been solved with the admins and the fractalists. However, I don't think all the artists on Deviantart will ever understand. There are a lot out there still who say we aren't artists and fractals aren't art. Oh well, I'm not going to give them any more attention.
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Yeah, I've been (somewhat) following the little uproar regarding the fractal art issue, and I kind of figured that it was solved by now. By now, I don't understand how people can still say fractals artn't art. It's a little blunt, but if fractal art is on DA, then why wouldn't it be art? Something to just throw around, really.
And thanks again for making it more clear!
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I have to agree with you. Honestly I didn't track the story at all, I read the most recent update of it and that is all. Personally though, I think its as much art as any of the things on here. Saying it isn't is kind of ludicrous. Like vectors for example, all they are are stamps people put on a photoshop or related program and change the colors of. The same with Photography (not to start a war with the world...) But technically speaking; all you do is decide which part of the scene you would like to make permanent, or Sketching: all you do is recreate what is already there. There is a lot that goes into fractals. You can change anything you would like--colors, shapes, sizes, etc etc etc--the same with painting, drawing, vectors, writing, and so on. Its all just in how you percieve what you are given.
*If that pisses anyone off let me say that its not ment rudely, I particularly enjoy photography vectors and sketching. I enjoy art in general, I'm just trying to make a point its as much art as the rest.
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Well said! I'm glad the admin now understands and have done/are doing something about it. Hopefully, other artists will understand. I wouldn't like another uproar like that between Fractal Artists and other artists.
On the positive side, this little misunderstanding really has given Fractal Art some exposure. So in a good aspect, at least now more artists actually know about Fractal Art. I actually started to notice Fractals right before the whole argument started. I remember just kind of grouping it in with abstract computer graphics. Hah! Now I know better!
And because of this, I actually respect Fractal Artists a lot more. They handled the situation really well. And their artwork is AWESOME!
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I definitely agree. And I'm sure some of the more prominent genres will have more than just one battle coming up. If and when the people who draw anime/manga get into another arguement (doom to happen sooner or later....again...), I'm going to try to be there ('cause that's mainly what I do, and I missed the other ones...). I kind of want to see how other groups of artists handle such situations.
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"It's a little blunt, but if fractal art is on DA, then why wouldn't it be art?"
That is a very, very, very good point. Mind if I paraphrase it for my signature?
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A different kind of art , i appreciate you )
You are a man of artcrafts ...
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Don't know how many people have said this so far... but Apophysis is really similar, with the way it saves, copies, and pastes parameters...
No right clicking on the screen though, just ctrl+c and ctrl+v from the main window.
Comes out as a text document, with slightly different formatting... reminds me of some form of xml.
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very well done for submitting this. brilliantly explained!
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Great and simple explanation!
also...
Thanks $Moonbeam13 for this lovely gesture! You rock Babe!
One tip: copy parametrs from UF, like this Mandelbrot above:
Fractal1 {
fractal:
title="Fractal1" width=640 height=480 layers=1 credits="silwena;8/2/2007"
layer:
caption="Background" opacity=100
mapping:
center=-0.5/0 magn=1
formula:
maxiter=100 filename="Standard.ufm" entry="Mandelbrot" p_start=0/0
p_power=2/0 p_bailout=4
inside:
transfer=none
outside:
transfer=linear
gradient:
smooth=yes index=0 color=8716288 index=100 color=16121855 index=200
color=46591 index=300 color=156
opacity:
smooth=no index=0 opacity=255
}
and paste in new mail composing in Mozilla Thunderbird.
Automatic formating change these letters into a pic
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wow didnt know that - is it a fractal pic?
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You are asking about the formula I posted? Yep, it's the mandelbrot.
The cutest is that You may paste the formula in pure, letters form ('
Cool
I discovered it 'by accident', while I was sharing with a Friend parametrs.
I am sure more people know this but nobody mentioned so.. I did
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you learn something new everyday
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Congratulations on the par tutorial and your DD! Every effort to clear the enormous misunderstanding about fractals and their artistic value is worth applause.
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nice, nice, nice! thank you for explaining it! I think now will everyone understand what are we talking about.
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i'm not really (or, you could say: really not) at home in the world of fractals. i've of course given them a try and even used a few in my composite works, but i'm lightyears from being a "fractalist". so, forgive me if I'm asking something dumb, but
these parameters can be (and often are) generated randomly, can't they?
i mean, if i start up apophysis, it gives a hundred completely random fractals, which, naturally, all have parameters. so, should one such random parameter-bunch of mine match somebody else's random (or tweaked, no matter) bunch, i become a thief?
sounds a bit wrong to me. it's like throwing a rock into the water, making a snapshot of the waves it casts... there's quite a chance in theory that somebody else could end up with a similar photo repeating this process: the throwers do not really have control over the splash and the physics of the water, so it's not really their creation. okay, i know (and have already said) that parameters can be and often are tweaked, yet as long as random generation can result in the same parameters as tweaking, it's hardly "copyrightable", is it? (else the creators of the fractal programs could say it's all theirs, since their algorhythms produce or could produce it all...? )
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Hi, sorry to cut in into your "dialogue" with FarDareisMai. I am a fractalist too, I use UltraFractal. You know mathematics have no end, they are an infinite series of numbers. So the "accidental" formation of two identical random sets of parameters is so close to impossible we can state it as actually impossible. Two sets may look alike in several ways but they are not identical if you look closer. Anyway, we are not supposed to take a randomly generated par set, render it and call it our own. Why would it be our own? Because it opened up in our computer? Of course not. There is a creative process involved, tweaking, thinking, doing and undoing, investigating, clearing our ideas about why we are making this particular fractal, what does it mean, what's its reason for being. And accordingly we try out different colouring algorithms, gradients, layer mergings... hundreds of actions. The possibilities are infinite, remember? You say: "parameters can be and often are tweaked". My friend, parameters MUST be tweaked. There has to be a creative intention behind each fractal, an effort and an idea. Art is not a random process.
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"Art is not a random process."
Well, it is to a lot of acid trippers from the 60's, but that's a whole other story
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You're right, but it's impossible to contemplate all the artistic movements and their validity in a series of comments 
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You have some valid points. I'll address them to the best of my ability.
"these parameters can be (and often are) generated randomly, can't they?"
Honestly, it depends on the program. For Ultra Fractal, no. There is no random generator button. You start from scratch. For apophysis, yes, there are randomly generated parameters.
But there are a few reasons why this is not as big of a problem as it first seems. First of all, respected artists (i.e., the ones that are getting ripped in the first place) do not render these random images and call it good, for the simple reason that the random images are ugly. Usually they just look like a bunch of dots or smears or spiky lines. Good artists put hours of work and study into it, controlling every minute detail, to create works such as [link] [link] [link] and [link] . The random flames can never match the intelligent input behind truly good fractals. And as far as I know, most good fractalists don't even start from the random flame. They use the "new blank flame" button.
As for the idea that you could somehow "accidentally" match someone's fractal... well, I'm going to have to use your signature against you. Fractal parameter possibilities are infinite. I'd go as far as to say that fractal parameters are the closest thing there is to "digital dna", because they are that unique. I could spend every moment of the rest of my life pressing the "random batch" button and never, ever, *ever* get something as beautiful as the images I linked to in the last paragraph.
As for your photography analogy, because even though the end result of the two pictures might be highly similar, the second person still went through the process of throwing the rock in the water and pressing the camera button.
This kind of thing happens in the fractal world too. A technique is discovered by one person, then uncovered to the masses, then it becomes really popular and really widespread, so that everybody and their dog is making a Julian fractal (oops, did I say that?
That's not the situation this tutorial is addressing. To continue with your rock-in-the-water analogy...
Let's imagine that instead of throwing his own rock into some water, the second photographer simple copy-paste's the first photographer's jpg. I'm not talking about making an unoriginal image in a popular style, I'm talking about duplicating a file with the click of a button and calling it yours. That's been happening with fractal parameters recently, and yet there was confusion over whether it was theft. And that's why I made the tut.
Hopefully I made all that somewhat clearer than mud for you.
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thats good question, but I think I can explain it a bit. you mention apophysis. yes on starting you get random batch, but really good fractals artist would never render something they "found" in random batch. I think mostly fractal artist go to those "triangles", move them and adds numbers to variations. When you have about five or ten triangles in different positions with different variations, do you think it is really possible to two people put those ten triangles on exactly same positions and exactly same numbers? I think it is very hardly possible.
in ultra fractal it is (kinda) similar. first you go thru defalut fractal, zoom somewhere in it and put layer with formula, change functions of this formula. Then you put another layer with different formula and change it's functions. and again when you have about ten layers, do you think that two people could make exactly same procedure? it is even more difficult in apophysis.
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I may not be a fractalist but that did give me a good chuckle. It sounded as though you're having problems with theft however... that sucks. Good luck stopping them.
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OMG he use 128 as his bailout?!? I USED THAT ONCE. THEIF!!!!!
Oh dear God, I totally lost it at that. Great example of how UF parameters work.
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Is Ultra Fractal any better than Apophysis? I've been having alot of trouble with it lately :S And I see a lot of people using it!
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I personally prefer Ultra Fractal, but I wouldn't say it is "better." They both have strong points, and it really depends on the artist's individual style.
Ummm... your comment confuses me, though. When you say "I've been having alot of trouble with it lately" do you mean with UF or Apoph?
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