Hi,

Is there any way to import a Chaotica file into Ultra Fractal 5?
Can it be taken from Chaotica, imported into Apophysis, and then brought into UF5?

Thanks so much for any help on this topic that you can give.

Hi,

the short answer is no, because of algorithmic and file format differences, Chaotica params can't be used with Apophysis or UltraFractal.

As for the long answer...

Chaotica/Apophysis/flam3 use a method called IFS (iterated function system) to render images, in which points jump around over the image randomly, accumulating some colour as they go... in this way an image appears uniformly over time (so the whole image needs to be stored in memory and worked with as a whole).

UltraFractal is based on a more straightforward rendering algorithm based on escape time analysis, which allows you to "ask for any pixel's colour" independently of any other, which makes it really easy to render with low memory usage. However, it's not possible to render IFS efficiently using this method, except in some special cases.

Besides these issues, Chaotica also supports some stuff Apophysis doesn't (such as for example being able to use any transform as normal, pre or post in a flam3 transform), and so would not be possible to save in the Apophysis file format.

Some historical info: UltraFractal generally uses a different rendering paradigm to flam3 (escape time instead of IFS), which is what led the flam3 co-author Erik Reckase to bet Mark Townsend that he couldn't make a flam3 rendering formula for UF. Somehow Mark Townsend managed it, and he later went on to write Apophysis. I'm not sure how he did it in UF but I doubt very much that it was fast/efficient, which is probably why it was made into its own program in the end.

Sorry for the negative answer but I hope I've given a good overview of why it's not possible, at least not right now. Maybe one day Apophysis will add support for Chaotica's .chaos XML file format?

Thanks so much for your detailed answer. Now I understand.
I have made flame fractals in UF5, and are so drawn to them, that I bought Chaotica.

The inter-operation with Apopohysis and Chaotica is one-directional, i.e. you can import Apo params into Chaotica, but not vice versa. Perhaps it is possible to export your parameters from UF to Apo first, then Apo to Chaotica?

I hope you're not too disappointed by this limitation, although that's why the free version exists! (to test it out without any significant restrictions)

No, I'm not disappointed at all. I'm trying to ascertain what is possible and what is not possible, that's all.

Please do not take this in any form as critical, but I thought if I could then take the animation back into UF5, I could then tweek the keys.

I'm very happy with Chaotica as it is, which is great. Thanks for answering.

Glad to hear you're enjoying it