Several weeks ago, in my daily effort to view all the daily submissions from the many Groups and individuals I watch, I started to notice more and more frequently that some of the Fractals I was viewing were being created using this new program. First it was just a few a day, then suddenly I was seeing dozens of Flames being created with JWildFire! Curios about this newcomer to the Fractal Scene I went to the website and discovered that the software is designed to run using Java and will run on multiple Platforms.

So, I with to the developers da page and told him that I had created a folder in Xtreme Fractals for the software! [link] also grabbed a snippet of information about the software to put on the left info panel of the folder. Since then the developer, *thargor6 has joined our Group and he and I have had several discussions about his program! What follows is a result of those discussion. Here's Andreas aka - Thagor6:

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JWildfire is an Java-based open source image processing package. Among lots of other things it contains T.I.N.A. - a powerful fractal flame editor which was inspired by flam3 and Apophysis. Intentionally developed as just a plugin for JWildfire T.I.N.A. currently has turned into something like the main feature of JWildfire

Key features:
- simple and realtime-updated user interface. All "triangle editing", gradient tweaking, camera adjustment, ... takes place in the same window. Changes to any property are displayed immediately in the center preview area. The "triangle editing" takes place directly "on top" of the final fractal.
- fast switching between the currently 130 built-in variations (and it's easy to create your own variations)
- triangles may be edited by just dragging them with the mouse or using precise controls
- different sophisticated random fractal generators which really make fun to play with
- thumbnail "ribbon" which allows it to switch between various fractals (or versions of them) via mouse-click
- high quality rendering (spatial and color oversampling, noise filter)
- compatible with Apophysis as much a possible (can directly read and write *.flame files, uses the same terms)
- copy/paste flames directly from/to clipboard (makes it even easier to import oder export flames from/to Apo)
- includes the popular "3d hack" by Peter Sdobnov (both 3D view and dof)
- includes one more "3d hack" - the shading hack - created only for JWildfire
- contains an integrated simple animation and morphing system
- is integrated into an image processing package which makes postprocessing a natural process and allows more complex animations using parameter envelopes
- batch renderer for always keeping your system busy
- running on all systems with installed Java 6 oder higher
- fresh code base released unter the LPGL
- comfortable and decent UI using the new Nimbus theme of Java
- fast program launch, no ads, no forced registering, no payment for rendering high res images, no bullshit at all, it's fun and free

And of coz, there is more to come Currently the following features are on schedule:
- performance optimizations
- some kind of HDR rendering
- some experimental shading/render syles
- optional faster C++-based renderer
- more documentation/tutorials


Here is what my wife said about the program (not a fake ):

"In the middle of november 2011 my husband asked me (again) to shortly test one of his recent additions of JWildfire. He is always interested in getting feedback from as many persons as possible - even from me being usually not really interested in software development and such things But this time things where different...
Until this time I never has done anything with fractals - I didn't even know what the term "fractal" exactly means and had never created any fractal image before. But after dragging some of those triangles... they simply got me! I could not stop moving, rotating them again, trying new combinations, ... I was simply fascinated and... somewhat lost.
In the meanwhile I have learned a lot of things about fractal flames and enjoy the fractal community at deviantArt!
And I'm really addicted to always create more fractal flames... ;D
There is only one thing... he still refuses to create an undo function saying this is on later schedule... but I'm REALLY missing an undo function "

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Best regards,
Andreas



Thanks Andreas for this exclusive look at a product lots of our members will be interested in! So there you have it gang! If you have any questions or comments about the software you can naturally leave a comment here or contact *thargor6

Go download JWildFire and start creating some Fantastic Fractals!

Enjoy and Have a Happy Holiday!

Rick

P.S. I will be showcasing the JWildFire folder on the Group Front Page this week! Take a look!

P.S.S Okay, here is a teaser from Andreas himself: