Welcome to the DIY page. There are several reasons why I created this. The main one is that I think that what I do is not something exclusive. In my opinion everybody who wants to put some effort in it can achieve the same result. These words are just meant to help you get started. Another reason is that I’m getting older and start to forget things. That’s why I use this as a sort of reminder.
Instead of creating multiple static pages, I decided to put everything on a single continuous page that I can regularly update or edit. English is not my native language, this means errors will occur. Especially when it comes to software, because I run almost everything in Dutch. Also I'm not an eloquent writer, I have a background as a teacher so I have made some courses in the past, but for mathematics you don't need a lot of words.
It is not my intention to provide you with detailed instructions or in-depth reviews. There are plenty of other sites where you can find that sort of content. The things I will talk about are the basics and some tips and tricks to help you on your way. Almost all software I use is free and open source, with a few reasonably priced exceptions.
I never use AI. Even the term repulses me, intelligence is more than just a neural network. There are some scientific uses I can comprehend if it's well supervised. Generative slop is an absolute NO!
Since a very young age I was interested in mathematics. My father was a teacher in mathematics so I was fortunate to inherit some of those skills. In high school, I started the science track combined with Latin. After some years I dropped the Latin and continued in math and science. I graduated from high school with a focus on industrial sciences. After that, I went to college to study computer science. Back then, this was something completely new (home computers were just starting to become popular), so the focus was mainly on science rather than programming. That was not my goal so I dropped out and studied morality and philosophy, but that was not a smart move so I quited that as well. So I went back to the subjects I was good at—math and physics—and earned a bachelor’s degree in those subjects to become a high school teacher.
As a child, I attended art school and music school. I was very mediocre in arts so that only lasted a few years. At music school, I studied music theory and was on the waiting list to study piano. After four years I had enough of the theory so I quit without learning to play an instrument. When I was in my early twenties, I picked it up again and taught myself to play the bass guitar. I made music with others and on my own with a 4-track recorder and some midi equipment. Later on I created and edited audio on computers using all kinds of software. After a bicycle accident, I have a permanent shoulder injury that prevents me from playing an instrument with physical intensity.
In the mid-1980s, I got a Commodore 64 and learned to program in BASIC on it. My first introduction with the internet was in 1994 and I have been online since 1998. The first website I created dates back to the beginning of this century. At first, I mainly used FrontPage, but the results weren’t always satisfactory, so I started working with the code as well. Around that time, I also started exploring graphic design software, mainly for the website, but also for personal reasons, such as the first software for displaying fractals.
I have been an amateur photographer, and I used to develop black-and-white photos in my own makeshift darkroom with various results.
3D fractal rendering software - Version: 2.34 - All platforms
To get the best rendering results, you need a system with a good CPU and, preferably, a very good GPU. But because of the enormous amount of calculations involved, rendering highly detailed images can take a very long time. I bought a good gaming laptop specifically for this purpose and do other things on other systems. And even then, I often render at night while I sleep. As soon as you start rendering, you’ll see an estimated time in the bottom right corner, and sometimes you’ll need to adjust the settings to get a reasonable estimate. The longest render I’ve done so far took about 16 hours.
After downloading and installing the software on your system, open the preferences to enable rendering on your GPU and "openCL" (see the enclosed manual for this). You can use multiple cards to work together as one unit.
In the toolbar on the top you will see some tumbnails you can render immediately. I removed all of those and use this bar for my starting setups. When I'm exploring fractals I use this bar to make a tumbnail of something I might want to go back to after further exploring, because the smallest changes can sometimes lead to completely different resulst and it's hard to go back once you have changed several parameters. You can always save your settings but I find this a faster way to do things.
More content soon...