Flam3 - The Flame Algorithm

Version: 
3.1.1
Release date: 
Sunday, 10 April, 2016

License:

Interface:

Flam3, a C library and related tools to algorithmically generate images and animations (Flames).

Flames are algorithmically generated images and animations. Flames is widely used to create art and special effects, like ones hosted at the well know "Electric Sheep" site, a collaborative abstract artwork.

The shape and color of each image is specified by a long string of numbers - a genetic code of sorts.

This software is distributed in two modes:
  • as compressed package that you have to download and manually install; if prerequisites are required, you will have to manually install them too;
  • as RPM package; you can install it using your favorite rpm package manager, that will take care to download and install both the software and its prerequisites.
Choose the installation mode that you prefer. Please note that not all the versions are available in both the installation modes.

Installation with rpm

This program is installable using the rpm package manager. See below for the install string. Required prerequisites are automatically processed by the package manager and, if needed, downloaded and installed.

flam3-devel-3.1.1-1.oc00 (24/05/2021)
Repository: Netlabs stable (note: development files, not needed by the end user)
flam3-3.1.1-1.oc00 (24/05/2021)
Repository: Netlabs stable
FLAM3 - cosmic recursive fractal flames see the file COPYING for the license covering this software. This is free software to render fractal flames as described on http://flam3.com. Flam3-animate makes animations, and flam3-render makes still images. Flam3-genome creates and manipulates genomes (parameter sets). A C library is also installed. Note: the following instructions are written for Linux users. Windows users may install the cygwin package to get the "env" command or set the envars in your windows command prompt manually. That means instead of a command like env dtime=5 prefix=foo. in=test.flame flam3-animate use the following set of commands: set dtime=5 set prefix=foo. set in=test.flame flam3-animate As usual, to configure, build, and install: ./configure make sudo make install If this has problems, you may need to re-generate some configuration files. Do the following steps: libtoolize aclocal automake autoconf and then try to configure and install as above. This package depends on development packages for libz, libpng, libjpeg, and libxml2. To test it, run flam3-render < test.flam3 and it should produce 00000.jpg and 00001.jpg, one image for each <flame> element in the parameter file. To make an animation run flam3-animate < test.flam3 and it should produce 100 files named 00000.jpg through 00099.jpg that interpolate between the two <flame> elements. envar default meaning ===== ======= ======= prefix (empty) prefix names of output files with this string. begin j time of first frame to render (j=first time in input file) (animate only) end n-1 time of last frame to render (n=last time specified in the input file) (animate only) time NA time of first and last frame (ie do one frame) (animate only) frame NA synonym for "time" (animate only) in stdin name of input file out NA name of output file (bad idea if rending more than one, use prefix instead) template NA apply defaults based on this genome (genome only) dtime 1 time between frames (animate only) fields 0 if 1 then render fields, ie odd scanlines at time+0.5 nstrips 1 number of strips, ie render fractions of a frame at once (render only) qs 1 quality scale, multiply quality of all frames by this ss 1 size scale, multiply size (in pixels) of all frames by this jpeg NA jpeg quality for compression, default is native jpeg default format png "jpg" or "ppm" or "png" pixel_aspect 1.0 aspect ratio of pixels (width over height), eg 0.90909 for NTSC isaac_seed random string to be used in generating random seed. defaults to time(0) seed random integer seed for random numbers, defaults to time+pid. deprecated. nthreads auto number of threads to use (render and animate) verbose 0 if non-zero then print progress meter on stderr bits 33 also 32 or 64: sets bit-width of internal buffers (33 means 32-bit floating-point) bpc 8 bits per channel of color: only png supports 16 (render/animate) image filename replace palette with png, jpg, or ppm image use_vars -1 comma sep list of variation #'s to use when generating a random flame (genome only) dont_use_vars unset comma sep list of variation #'s to NOT use when generating a random flame. (genome only) cross0 NA randomly select one genome from this file to genetically cross (genome only) cross1 NA with one genome from this file (genome only) method NA method for genetic cross: alternate, interpolate, or union. (genome only) mutate NA randomly mutate a random genome from this file (genome only) symmetry NA set symmetry of result. (genome only) clone NA clone random flame in input (genome only) clone_all NA clones all flames in file. useful for applying template to all flames (genome only) animate NA interpolates between all flames in a file, using times specified in file (genome only) sequence NA 360 degree rotation 'loops' times of each control point plus rotating transitions (genome only) loops NA number of times to rotate each control point in sequence (genome only) tries 50 number of tries to make to find a good genome. (genome only) strip NA strip input, frame and nframes control which one. (genome only) transparency 0 make bknd transparent, if format supports it (render/animate) name_enable 0 use 'name' attr in <flame> to name image output if present (render only) nick "" nickname to use in <edit> tags / img comments url "" url to use in <edit> tags / img comments id "" ID to use in <edit> tags / img comments comment "" comment string for <edit> tags (genome only) use_mem auto floating point number of bytes of memory to use (render only) noedits unset omit edit tags from output (genome only) write_genome 0 write out genome associated with center of motion blur window (animate only) print_edit_depth 0 depth to truncate <edit> tag structure. 0 prints all <edit> tags (genome only) intpalette unset round palette entries for importing into older Apophysis versions (genome only) insert_palette unset insert the palette into the image. enable_jpeg_comments 1 enables comments in the jpeg header (render and animate) enable_png_comments 1 enables comments in the png header (render and animate) earlyclip 0 enables the early clipping of rgb values for better antialiasing and resizing defaults to 0 for backwards compatibility flam27 0 flam3 2.7 compatibility mode; ensures generated genomes can be used by flam3 2.7.18 stagger 0 affects simultaneity of xform interpolation during genome interpolation. represents how 'separate' the xforms are interpolated. set to 1 for each xform to be interpolated individually, fractions control interp overlap. apo_palette 0 set this to 1 to use only the first 255 elements of the palette (apophysis compatibility) for example: env dtime=5 prefix=foo. in=test.flam3 flam3-animate means to render every 5th frame of parameter file foo.flam3, and store the results in files named foo.XXXX.jpg. the flam3-convert program reads from stdin the old format created by the GIMP and writes to stdout the new xml format. the flam3-genome program creates random parameter files. it also mutates, rotates, and interpolates existing parameter files. for example to create 10 wholly new control points and render them at normal quality: env template=vidres.flam3 repeat=10 flam3-genome > new.flam3 flam3-render < new.flam3 if you left out the "template=vidres.flam3" part then the size, quality, etc parameters would be their default (small) values. you can set the symmetry group: env template=vidres.flam3 symmetry=3 flam3-genome > new3.flam3 env template=vidres.flam3 symmetry=-2 flam3-genome > new-2.flam3 flam3-render < new3.flam3 flam3-render < new-2.flam3 Mutation is done by giving an input flame file to alter: env template=vidres.flam3 flam3-genome > parent.flam3 env prefix=parent. flam3-render < parent.flam3 env template=vidres.flam3 mutate=parent.flam3 repeat=10 flam3-genome > mutation.flam3 flam3-render < mutation.flam3 Normally one wouldn't use the same file for the template and the file to mutate. Crossover is handled similarly: env template=vidres.flam3 flam3-genome > parent0.flam3 env prefix=parent0. flam3-render < parent0.flam3 env template=vidres.flam3 flam3-genome > parent1.flam3 env prefix=parent1. flam3-render < parent1.flam3 env template=vidres.flam3 cross0=parent0.flam3 cross1=parent1.flam3 flam3-genome > crossover.flam3 flam3-render < crossover.flam3 flam3-genome has 3 ways to produce parameter files for animation in the style of electric sheep. the highest level and most useful from the command line is the sequence method. it takes a collection of control points and makes an animation that has each flame do fractal rotation for 360 degrees, then make a smooth transition to the next. for example: env sequence=test.flam3 nframes=20 flam3-genome > seq.flam3 flam3-animate < seq.flam3 creates and renders a 60 frame animation. there are two flames in test.flam3, so the animation consists three stages: the first one rotating, then a transition, then the second one rotating. each stage has 20 frames as specified on the command line. if you want to render only some fraction of a whole animation file, specify the begin and end times: env begin=20 end=40 flam3-animate < seq.flam3 the other two methods are harder to use because they produce files that are only good for one frame of animation. the output consists of 3 control points, one for the time requested, one before and one after. that allows proper motion blur. for example: env template=vidres.flam3 flam3-genome > rotme.flam3 env rotate=rotme.flam3 frame=10 nframes=20 flam3-genome > rot10.flam3 env frame=10 flam3-animate < rot10.flam3 the file rot10.flam3 specifies the animation for just one frame, in this case 10 out of 20 frames in the complete animation. C1 continuous electric sheep genetic crossfades are created like this: env inter=test.flam3 frame=10 nframes=20 flam3-genome > inter10.flam3 env frame=10 flam3-animate < inter10.flam3 see http://flam3.com/flame.pdf for descriptions & formulas, and see http://electricsheep.wikispaces.com/Variations for updates. The complete list of variations: 0. linear 1. sinusoidal 2. spherical 3. swirl 4. horseshoe 5. polar 6. handkerchief 7. heart 8. disc 9. spiral 10. hyperbolic 11. diamond 12. ex 13. julia 14. bent 15. waves 16. fisheye 17. popcorn 18. exponential 19. power 20. cosine 21. rings 22. fan 23. blob 24. pdj 25. fan2 26. rings2 27. eyefish 28. bubble 29. cylinder 30. perspective 31. noise 32. julian 33. juliascope 34. blur 35. gaussian_blur 36. radial_blur 37. pie 38. ngon 39. curl 40. rectangles 41. arch 42. tangent 43. square 44. rays 45. blade 46. secant2 47. twintrian 48. cross 49. disc2 50. super_shape 51. flower 52. conic 53. parabola 54. bent2 55. bipolar 56. boarders 57. butterfly 58. cell 59. cpow 60. curve 61. edisc 62. elliptic 63. escher 64. foci 65. lazysusan 66. loonie 67. pre_blur 68. modulus 69. oscilloscope 70. polar2 71. popcorn2 72. scry 73. separation 74. split 75. splits 76. stripes 77. wedge 78. wedge_julia 79. wedge_sph 80. whorl 81. waves2 82. exp 83. log 84. sin 85. cos 86. tan 87. sec 88. csc 89. cot 90. sinh 91. cosh 92. tanh 93. sech 94. csch 95. coth 96. auger 97. flux see http://flam3.com/flame.pdf for descriptions & formulas for each of these. note that, by default, if a random flame is requested and neither 'use_vars' or 'dont_use_vars' are specified, the following variations are not used: noise, blur, gaussian_blur, radial_blur, ngon, square, rays, and cross. note: these variations do not use the variation weight to scale their contributions, and so will not be implemented in flam3: circlize ====================================== todo: eliminate all static storage. ====================================== changelog: 5/17/15 Added hsv_circular and hsv_rgb_palette_blend. Improved edit history of genetic algorithm (keep track of generation). Add find_parents operator to flam3-genome. Release as 3.1.1. 12/29/10 Added --version option to flam3-genome. fixed bug in 16 bpc png image writing when using strips. xform opacity now affects calculated width of density estimation filters. Release as 3.0.1. 10/05/10 Small tweaks. Fuse iterations default to 15 but increase to 100 when using earlyclip. flux variation added. Release as 3.0. 12/20/09 Highlight power now interpolates smoothly from old behavior (-1) to new behavior. flam3-genome 'split' mode was broken, fixed (thanks Exper.) Die gracefully instead of segfault when very small estimator_curve values are specified. Version attribute added to flame tag. Number of iterations used to fuse attractor increased to 100. Release as 2.8beta7. 11/24/09 Potential speedup of 5% over prior versions. Many threading issues identified and resolved when using flam3 shared library as back end for user interfaces. 14 complex plane variations added. auger variation added. new flam3_make_strip library function to generate stripped genomes for external ui strip renders. bug fix: when rendering strips, use the same random context for each strip to prevent edge effects where strips butt against each other. flam3 will now linearly interpolate missing colors in the colormap. Release as 2.8beta6. 10/16/09 Non-threadsafe progress tracking code in main iteration thread replaced with per-render progress storage. Fixed bug where pausing render during density estimation stage terminated render. Waves2 variation fixed (thx Joel F). Release as 2.8beta5. 10/07/09 Fixed bug affecting 'animate' mode with flam3-genome. Changed estimate_bounding_box to increase discarded iterations if numerous badvals were encountered during iterations. Exported a few more functions for Windows DLL. Release as 2.8beta4. 10/03/09 Changed color_speed range from 0 (no color change) to 1 (use new xform color). Animate attribute is now 0 for no motion, 1 for motion. Removed final xform from stagger algorithm. 'oscope' parameters are now called 'oscilloscope' to match the rest of the parametric variations (backwards compatible, so old genomes can be read.) Stagger now affects morphing as well as sheep rotation, but only using flam3-genome (not flam3-animate). Release as 2.8beta3. 03/18/09 Major upgrade : - 28 variations added, mostly from the sourceforge plugins pack - significant speed optimization of variations - setting earlyclip env var on commandline will enable an alternate calculation of color values, resulting in better antialiasing - 'highlight_power' flame element controls the white highlights in dense areas, eliminating the hue shift bug - Apophysis chaos and solo xform/plotmode features have been implemented. solo/plotmode are promoted to floating point 'opacity'. opacity and chaos are both interpolatable. - <motion> tag now available for xforms...allows cyclic variation of any regular xform parameter/coef/post. - env var 'stagger' affects the simultaneity of xform interpolation when morphing from one flame to another. set to 0 for existing behaviour, set to 1 to make each xform interpolate individually - symmetry has been broken out into color_speed and animate tags with the same sense (which is confusing and will be fixed in a future release). - set the flam27 env var to output backwards compatible genomes (when possible.) - passes the consistency test where rendering an image at double size and filtering it down produces the same results as the original (modulo quality). 03/17/09 Added fuzz testing with zzuf to the regression tests. 'Strip' mode and genomes with the zoom parameter used now break into pieces properly. insert_palette fixed (broken a few versions ago.) fixed twintrian variation when small weights are used. various rare segfaults and memory leaks fixed. 'palette_mode' attribute added to flame element for smoother palette interpolation in slow animations; possible values are 'step' and 'linear' ('step' mode is default and matches previous behaviour.) Release as 2.7.18. 11/11/08 Add error checking on the numbers in the input genome. Do not exit on read errors, fail gracefully. Changed sin/cos = tan in the tangent variation. Added polar to list of variations that use the inverted linear identity. Bugfix: temporal_filter_exp was not set properly in template. Apply interpolation attribute in templates. Add/publish datarootdir with pkg-config so the palette file is easy to find (for qosmic). Copyright by Spotworks LLC instead of Spot and Erik. Add fuzz checks to the regression suite. include LNX/OSX/WIN in the version string. In flam3-genome animate command, added one to last flame time, so the end time is inclusive. Release as 2.7.17. 09/06/08 Added 'clone_all' to flam3_genome to allow application of template to all flames in a file at once, and 'animate' to write a full sequence of interpolations out. 'animate' is similar to 'sequence' except that no control point rotation is performed. Fixed non-functional 'write_genome' env var for flam3_animate. Two bugs associated with interpolating from a log interpolation_type to a non-log interpolation_type fixed (rotate angle reduction and special inverted identity). when using flam3_rotate in 'spin_inter' the interp type of the first genome is now used rather than the current genome's interp type. Enforced upper and lower bounds for xform color and upper bound for interpolated colormap values as "smooth" interpolation led to values out of range. If "smooth" interpolation is specified for all flames in a file, the first and second-to-last genome is switched to "linear" with a warning. spatial filters with non-box-filter window functions fixed. Release as 2.7.16. 08/25/08 Added new interpolation types 'old' and 'older', for use in recreating old animations. 'linear' mode now does not rotate padded xforms (results in prettier symmetric singularities). switched to using a 'padding' flag instead of a 'just initialized' flag; padding flag used for implementation of 'old' and 'older' types. interpolation_space now deprecated, instead use interpolation_type. flam3_align is now idempotent (multiple applications do not change the control points.) Default number of temporal samples bumped to 1000. Removed CVS headers from source code (now using SVN). Default interpolation mode now log. Removed 'move' and 'split' vars. changes to flam3-genome: sequence mode now returns linear interpolation mode for all control points except first/last of edges - these cps will use the original interpolation mode; inter and rotate modes will now return padded genomes for all control points, all with linear interpolation specified. instead of centering sometimes reframe by golden mean plus noise. Release as 2.7.15. 07/21/08 Add configuration option for atomic-ops. bug fix: do not truncate floating point palettes. new motion blur features: add temporal_filter_type, can be "box" (default) or "gaussian" or "exp". Temporal_filter_width and temporal_filter_exp are parms to it. 'blur' env var no longer used. Small bug fix: iteration count depends only on the size of the output image, not the padded image (the gutter). When interpolating, only do -pi/pi adjustment for non-asymmetric cases. Julian/juliascope variations use the alternate inverted identity for interpolation (reduces wedge effect). Add python script for regression and consistency checking. Add svn revision number to version string (in the software not of the package). Release as 2.7.14. 05/28/08 Restored upper limit on particle coordinates. Release as 2.7.13. 05/16/08 Added man pages. Removed upper limit on particle coordinates. fixed FSF address in comments. update to automake 1.10.1. added eps to denom of perspective fraction to avoid infinities (thanks fred). Put contents of 'id' env var in png/jpg comment block. Release as 2.7.12. 04/05/08 Added 16 bit per channel support to PNG via bpc envar. isaac.h is now installed with the flam3 headers. Strip indexing now done with size_t's to fix bug in large images (thanks Paul). Progress callback now returns ETA, and per-thread verbose flag functionality fixed. Enumerated spatial filter types now used in flam3.h, taking the place of function pointers (simplifies the API). Fix bug by moving precalculation of variation variables to flam3_iterate (thanks david). Release as 2.7.11. 03/15/08 fixed interpolation bug when magnitude of rotation/scaling component of affine transform is 0. replaced secant variation with more flame-friendly secant2 (eliminates gap in y direction, scales y-coordinate by weight). warning message now printed when unrecognized variation is present in an xform. fixed bad inequality when checking for -pi/pi discontinuity during complex interpolation. release as 2.7.10. 02/08/08 non-zero weights for final xforms no longer allowed, and now have no effect. recompiled windows exes with mingw gcc 4.1 to take advantage of scalability improvements in flam3 2.7.8 (was compiling with mingw gcc 3.4 until now). for fedora package compliance, flam3.pc.in patched by ian weller and moved use of config.h to c files only. release as 2.7.9. 01/26/08 better scalability across multiple CPUs by using compare and swap (from Tim Hockin). fix bug in large images (>2GB). add flam3_srandom and flam3_malloc/free to better support wrapping with python on windows, which links with a different C runtime. add --enable-shared option to configure script (from Bobby R Ward). release as 2.7.8. 12/16/07 fixed bug (rare random crash) identified by david burnett. initialize new xforms with better defaults for parametric variations (based on interpolated-against xforms). add id envar, like nick/url. add clone_action envar. return to xform interpolation based on complex logs, but make consistent decisions about counter/clockwise rotation across the sheep edges. interpolation_space attribute to flame element can be set to "linear" to go back to the simpler method, or "log" to use this new (default) method. release as 2.7.7 10/20/07 fixed action string overflow when many xforms are present. added 'print_edit_depth' env var to control how many levels of <edit> tags are saved when using flam3-genome. Fixed wrong placement of random improve_colors code in flam3-genome. go to five digit filenames. fixed bug in supershape variation. API cleanup, thanks to david bitseff. release 2.7.6. 08/14/07 various code updates to assist with compiling under msvc++. now can specify --disable-pthread or --enable-pthread to configure to better control compilation. fixed bug preventing renders of flames with more than 128 xforms. release 2.7.5. 07/12/07 fixed bug in split variation, now compatible with both versions of Apo. added insert_palette option. switched density estimation kernel from Epanichnikov to Gaussian. genetic cross now crosses palettes rather than selecting one of the parent palettes. remove noisy variations from random generation if use_vars or dont_use_vars not specified. fixed metrics calculated on small test render for genetic operations. reduced memory requirements for density estimation filters. 64-bit linux distros now supported. release 2.7.4. 06/21/07 flam3 version, rendered genome, some render statistics and optionally nick/url stored in jpeg/png headers. fixed two bugs in isaac rng code (strongly affected temporal blur). prevent final xform rotation for sheep animation. fixed interpolation when only one flame has final xform. added Supershape, Flower, Conic, Parabola, Move and Split variations. Shape combined with Supershape via 'rnd' parameter. flam3-genome now writes 'name' attribute for rotate and sequence modes. oversample attribute deprecated; supersample now preferred. new build process for windows exes using MinGW/MSYS. added 'intpalette' env var to round floating point palettes to allow older versions of Apophysis to read them. default image type is now PNG, transparency off. density estimation code revised to be more consistent between different supersample levels, which required change to default de params. limit number of de filters to conserve memory. fixed julia variation dependency on non-thread-safe random bit function. removed random number storage for radial blur variation. release 2.7.3. 07/26/08: Note, incompat. change made to direction of cp->rotate (as of 2.7.3, rotates shortest distance instead of clockwise) 02/09/07 use isaac random number generator to avoid differences between mac/pc/linux. use multiple threads to take advantage of multiple CPUs or cores. new variations: disc2, Arch, Tangent, Square, Rays, Blade, Secant, Twintrian, Cross. fixed bug reading hex color format - must remove \n prior to start of colors if present. use EPS in spiral, hyperbolic and spherical to eliminate black spots. fix numbering of disc2, change parameter to estimate_bounding_box. made blur kernel type templatable. removed extraneous 'enabled="1"' in writing out final xform information (no longer needed). release 2.7.2. 12/31/06 fixed bug in waves precalculation code. curl and rectangles variations from joel faber. remove visibility of rotation_center attribute, fix strips operator to handle rotation without it. added motion exponent and gamma lin thresh to flam3_print. list of variations in the docstring automatically generated. flam3-genome: envar noedits suppresses output of edit history. release 2.7.1. 09/27/06 print out palette as floating point with up to 6 digits rather than integers (for very slow smooth transitions). Added optimization to only recalculate the xform distrib array when necessary (Thanks Joel Faber). Added settable kernel for downrez. Added XML reading code for new <palette> format for gradients. Functionalized hex gradient read. Removed color shift experimental feature. New 'motion_exponent' attribute controls fade of temporal steps. added gaussian_blur and radial_blur vars from apo. added pie and ngon variations from joel faber. add rotation_center attribute. added but disabled image variation from joel. release as 2.7. 06/26/06 use new libpng api, handle libpng errors properly (from nix at esperi.org.uk). print out palette as floating point with 6 digits rather than integers (for very slow smooth transitions). 06/11/06 disable density estimation for 16 and 32 bit buffers because it doesn't work. Apo team removed "enabled" from final xform specification, so now it defaults to on. make default temporal samples be 60 so that motion blur is the default, but explicitly ignore temporal samples when rendering still frames. add strip genetic operator to flam3-genome for breaking a flame into strips for parallel rendering. add subpixel offsets for antialiasing by averaging multiple images. release as 2.7b8. 05/25/06 change attribute name "batches" to "passes" because many old genomes have it set, and with density estimation it is harmful. 04/28/06 remove debugging code, release as 2.7b7. 04/28/06 add attribute interpolation="smooth" for catmull-rom interpolation. known bug: some frames come out dark. release as 2.7b6. 04/15/06 rename XML attribute "estimator" to "estimator_radius". fix the progress callback. add use_mem envar. move palette database to external file. cleanup namespace. add new variations blur, julian, and juliascope. fix flam3-convert. add experimental color shifting via "shift" envar. supports finalxform. can read hex palette format. avoids the "square" that appears from NaNs. release as 2.7b5. 01/11/06 unlimited number of xforms per flame. new variations cylinder and perspective. rename rename de_max_filter to estimator, de_min_filter to estimator_minimum, de_alpha to estimator_curve, and jitters to temporal_samples. release as 2.7b4. 11/28/05 performance optimization, fix symmetry singularities, added bubble variation, fixed handkerchief variation, templates apply to sequence and rotate flam3-genome commands, added envar "name_enable" to render filenames specified in the "name" attribute of the flame element, small bugfixes, release as 2.7b3. 11/04/05 verbose on by default. Added 'transparency' envar for png renders without transparency channel. Fixed non-black background jpeg renders. add improve_colors mutation, rewrite most of estimate_bounding_box. added new variations blob pdjd fan2 rings2 eyefish. added '33bit' method for 32-bit floats. <edit> tags track history. alter the gamma curve to be linear near 0 to avoid singularity and reduce noise, set with gamma_threshold. release as v2.7b2. 09/24/05 new density estimator and temporal jitter code from Erik Reckase (note removal of todo items above :). allow gamma, vibrancy, contrast, pixels_per_unit, and brightness to vary as part of the genome rather than as part of the rendering parameters. flam3-genome does not retry when cloning. ditch 2nd color coordinates. release as v2.7b1. 06/27/05 in flam3_dimension, give up and return NaN if 90% or more of the samples are being clipped. release v2.6. 06/22/05 add envar to control the number of tries. 06/06/05 add new form of mutation that introduces post xforms. 05/20/05 fix memory trashing bug resulting from xform overflow. put regular xforms before symmetry in printed genomes. enforce weights non-negative & at least one xform. remove nan-protection from popcorn variation. truncate xforms with very small weight. 05/13/05 fix bug reported by erik reckase where fan variation could blow up to NaN because the domain of atan2 was not protected. remove protection from all atan2 calls and instead detect NaN results and replace them with noise. count really large values as bad too to prevent blowing up to infinity. enforce 0<=hue<1, release v2.6b1. 05/05/05 report choices made during genome generation in notes attribute. flam3_dimension no longer hangs when most of the attractor is outside the camera. limit number of variations produced by genetic operators to 5. reduce rate of interpolation method of crossover. 03/17/05 put cloning back in (found by James Rantanen). 03/08/05 change sawtooth variation (incompatible!). add fan variation. rename sawtooth to rings. release as v2.5. 03/01/05 fix rotation when nstrips > 1. add flam3_dimension(). minor bugfixes. release as v2.4. 01/25/05 release as v2.3. 01/18/05 support post xforms (idea from eric nguyen). support camera rotation. 12/28/04 release as v2.2. 12/27/04 preview implementation of image fractalization by adding a color coordinate. changed how random/default color coordinates are selected (they alternate 0 and 1 instead of being distributed between 0 and 1). WARNING: incompatible format change to samples argument of flam3_iterate. 12/20/04 allow mutation and crossover from files with multiple genomes. a random genome is selected for each repetition. 12/11/04 fix bug printing out interpolated non-built-in palettes. warn if any images sizes in animation do not match. 12/01/04 remove debugging code left in flam3-convert, thanks to Paul Fishwick for reporting this. add cosine variation. add sawtooth variation. handle nstrips that do not divide the height. write partial results as strips are computed. fix old bug where in 32 bit mode one of the terms appeared to be calculated at 16 bits. release as v2.1. 10/28/04 fix docstring bug. release as v2.0.1. 10/28/04 renaming, cleanup, and modularization. now exports libflam3.a and flam3.h, all names prefixed with flam3_. binaries named with flam3- prefix, genome files use flam3 suffix. create and install a flam3.pc pkg-config file. release as v2.0. 09/21/04 fix bug where code for integer rounding was left in 64-bit floating point version. round remaining time up so we do not say ETA in 0 seconds. do not use static allocation to hold onto memory, just malloc and free what we need every frame. enforce positive oversampling. fix bug in hqi on sequences of images of different sizes. release as v1.15. 09/17/04 change name of envar to control jpeg compression quality from "quality" to "jpeg". check for bad nbatches values. release as v1.14. 08/23/04 add about 600 cmaps from Jackie, Pat Phillips, Classylady, and BTomchek. use 64-bit (double) sized buffers. remove white_level. add new variations: exponential & power. fix bug where hue_rotation was left uninitialized. add clone option to pick-flame which just applies template to the input without modifying genome. random_control_point can now put multiple variations in one xform. remove altivec code because it is incompatible with 64-bit buffers. verbose (progress bar on stderr) from Jon Morton. control random number seeds via seed envar. support buffer sizes 16, 32, or 64 bits with three versions of rect.c included into libifs.c. 03/28/04 fix bug interpolating between flames with different numbers of xforms introduced by the new de/parsing. add modified version of the popcorn variation from apophysis. fix small bug in waves variation. make distribution of variations even. add altivec code from R.J. Berry of warwick.ac.uk. release as v1.13. 03/26/04 add wave variation. allow negative variational coefs. do not truncate filter width to an integer. add fisheye variation. make variations print by name instead of using a vector, that is say spherical="1" instead of var="0 0 1" or var1="2". it should still read the old format. 03/07/04 fix bug printing out result of interpolating between symmetries. release as v1.11. 03/03/04 add new means of crossover: a random point between the parents as defined by linear interpolation. in all kinds of crossover, reset the color coordinates to make sure they are spread out well. somehow lost part of the extra_attributes patch, so put it in again. add pixel_aspect_ratio envar. decrease filter cutoff threshold. the edges of the filter were almost zeros, so making the filter smaller saves time with almost no effect on the results. do not print out the attributes of control points that have default values. release as v1.10. 02/26/04 remove prefix argument to print_control_point, and add extra_attributes. allow any value for vibrancy parameter. allow variation blending coefs to have any values. do not normalize them. on windows nstrips is computated automatically to fit within memory (leaves at least 20% unused). support png image format and if output is png then compute & output alpha channel. release as v1.9. 02/01/04 add julia variation, and put bent variation back in. change how colors are computed in presense of symmetry: xforms that come from a symmetry do not change the color index. this prevents the colors from washing out. since an xform may be interpolated between a symmetry and not, this this is a blending factor. add more documentation. add function to compute lyapunov coefs. allow control over symmetries produced by pick-flame. release as v1.8. 07/20/03 cleanup, update documentation, release as v1.7. 07/15/03 fix bug in interpolation where in last frame when going from non-symmetric to symmetric it left out some xforms. drop support for "cmap_inter". add var1 as a abbreviation to var in xml output, and do not print trailing 0s in var string. 07/09/03 change matrix interpolation to be linear rather than complex log to avoid the discontinuity at 180 degrees. this was causing jumpiness in the C1 continuous algorithm. this means that rotation has to be handled with pick-flame. put direct support for symmetries in the de/parser to make control points smaller and easier to understand. support combinations of bilateral & rotational symmetry. 06/22/03 bug in colormap interpolation. release as v1.6. 06/20/03 fix some bugs, in particular remove sorting of the xforms when control points are read. they are only sorted when they are generated. updated dates on copyright notices. added time parameter to anim, shorthand for begin & end being the same. added a fairly terrible hack to allow palettes to be specified as blending of two basic palettes. this requires much less bandwidth than sending 256 rgb triples. in pick-flame change default to be enclosed xml output. 06/09/03 add C1 continuous interpolation to pick-flame (suggested by Cassidy Curtis). added new variations from Ultra Fractal version by Mark Townsend. added symmetry xforms. 06/02/03 add convert-flame which reads the old file format and writes the new one. release as v1.5. 03/22/03 fix bug in hqi & anim. somewhere along the way (prolly jpeg) nstrips was broken. add qs and ss params to hqi. discontinue strips for anim because the implementation is a bit problematic (animating zoom??). bump version to 1.4. 03/05/03 add pick-flame.c to the project, and extend it with mutation and crossover capability. add parse_control_points_from_file (and use it). rename non-xml variants of de/parsers to *_old and rename xml variants to remove _xml. add rotate_control_point. bump version to 1.3. 02/10/03 increase CHOOSE_XFORM_GRAIN by 10x and use chars instead of ints. remove extra -ljpeg from Makefile. lose hack that ignored density xforms after interpolation. what was that for?? it makes a difference, and just makes interpolation less smooth as far as i can tell. bump version to 1.2. 01/17/03 release as v1.1. 01/16/03 support output in jpeg format; this is the default. support win32. 01/08/03 by default don't render the last frame so that animations dove-tail and loop 01/06/03 fix how too many xforms are detected so that one more xform is allowed. 12/22/02 first release as independent package. release as v1.0.

Manual installation

Program is distributed as ZIP package: download to temporary directory and unpack to destination folder. See below for download link(s).

The use of a media player (optional), allows the reproduction of the graphic sequences generated by the running algorithm.
 
Warning: to generate an animated genome that is satisfactory, the program requires computing cycles, availability of resources and substantial memory, also performed on discretionary rather long time.

Besides the artistic/recreational/ experimental aspect, which in fact, in conjunction with the Electric Sheep screensaver, involves distributed computing, this software, put a strain on the resources and computing units of a system.

You can install the prerequisites with rpm running the following string in a command line:

yum install libc libgcc1 libgcc-fwd libstdc++6 libsupc++6 libxml2 pthread urpo libpng libjpeg zlib
Following links are to additional programs, not mandatory but useful:

Online documentation:

Following ones are the download links for manual installation:

Record updated last time on: 06/06/2021 - 16:42

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