Fractal Panel

The Fractal Selection Control

This control is for chossing the fractal type. Use the slider or the arrows in this control to move around the list of fractals.
Select it by clicking over the name of the fractal.
Once you select the fractal, a set of random parameters are assigned to the fractal, so it can appears in the view windows.
For more information of the Fractal types, please go to the Fractal Types page.

Information Panels

These panels can give brief information about the selected fractal.
In the case of the top panel, the information is:

The Fractal Name.
Number of transformation used.
Number of base shapes used.
The selected resolution for the rendering.
The 2XAA (AntiAliasing) option (visible only if it's enabled).

Load and Save Fractal Buttons

These two buttons save all of the programs parameters (including textures and meshes) to a file.
Use this for storing your fractals parameters.
The file extension used is “.zdat” and the content of the file is binary.

Load and Save Buffers Buttons

These two buttons save all of the program parameters and buffers in a given moment.
The resolution used on the program defines the size of the resultant file. Mind that if you plan to save a big (8192×8192, for example) resolution fractal.
The file extension used is “.zb3” and the content of the file is binary.

Send to Blocks

This button converts the actual fractal type into a Blocks based one.This option is only valid for certain fractal types.

The Save and Load Scripts Buttons

These two buttons are used for exporting and importing Incendia Script files.

The Save Script button is visible in certain fractal types, allowing the user to export the selected fractal to an script. Incendia prompts for a filename and the script is saved with the ".prg" file extension. The script can be modified in any text program such as notepad.exe.
The Load Script Button is only visible when the Incendia Script fractal is selected. With this button you can load any Incendia Script.

For more information on the Scripts and their formats, check the Incendia Script section.

Geometrica

This control is for exporting the current fractal to Geometrica. The button will become disabled if the Fractal/Baseshape combination is not supported by Geometrica.

Paths Controls

These controls helps to determine the actual input/output directiories that Incendia uses.
The Reset Path buttons, returns Incendia to the default directory path. This is useful for cases when you import an external surface texture, but wants to return to the default directory on where all textures are stored.
In the case of the Keep Default Path option, when enabled, Incendia keep using the default directories.

Render Threads

This control is for choosing the number of threads used for the rendering process. By default, Incendia uses one thread. Depending of the system configuration, you can launch more render threads, effectively reducing the render time.
The actual number of logical cores reported by the system is show.
Precaution: Do not use more threads than the system support, because this will slow downs the whole rendering process.

Main Controls and Preview

The New Fractal Button

Once you have selected a fractal type, you can play dice with the fractal parameters with this button.
This produces a new fractal every time.
Since the parameters are randomly (but not completely random, there are some rules called Generators that controls the shape of the fractal) selected, the previous one is completely erased.

Preview and Draw Buttons

These two buttons are mainly used for alternating between the actual fractal iterations (white points) and a fast preview of the fractal (shaded and textured).
Also, they can be used to lock and unlock the trackball controls of the camera and the zoom slider. When rendering, use the Preview button to see how the fractal develops.

Mouse Controls and the Preview Windows

Incendia has two control modes for the preview window, one is the fractal iteration (in shades of grey), and the other a fast preview (shaded, including materials and backgrounds).

The Fractal Iteration preview:

This preview mode is activated by pressing the "Draw" button.
When Incendia has this mode activated, the mouse controls defines the position, rotation and zoom of the fractal. The controls are:

The Left Mouse Button controls the trackball rotation (you can restrict the trackball rotation axis with the rotation control).
The Right Mouse Button controls the panning around the fractal (this can be restricted to an specific axe, using the position control).
The Mouse Wheel controls the zoom factor (if you don’t have a mouse wheel, you can use the zoom slider).

The Shaded Preview:
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This preview mode is activated when you hit the "Preview" button.
Once this mode is activated, Incendia begins make a shaded preview that includes the fractal materials among with the background and the illumination parameters of the scene. This preview is updated dynamically.
The Mouse controls works here, but once they are activated, the preview mode changes to the Fractal Iteration preview.

The Render, Stop and Continue Buttons

These buttons start, stop and continue the renders process, they work in the following way:
The Render Button starts the rendering process, erasing all of the content of the buffers first.
Mind that if you have a previous fractal in the buffers.
The first time it just starts the render process since there’s nothing in the buffers.
If you have stopped the rendering process and press again the Render button, it will show a warning message telling you that the previous content of the buffers will be erased.

Answer “Yes” if you want to erase all or “No” if you don’t want to lose the previous content of the buffer.
Once the render process has started, this button disappears, and the Stop button becomes visible.

The Stop Button just stops the renders process. You can use it to interrupt all of the threads on the program that are rendering the fractal. By pressing this button, also it makes visible both Render and Continue Buttons.

The Continue Button works in the same way that the Render Button does, by starting the rendering process, but with the difference that it doesn’t erase the content of the buffers.

This is useful if you have stopped the fractal rendering process (for saving, an image for example) and want to continue. A word of warning: Since the Continue button didn’t erase the content of the buffers, if you stop the render process and rotate, zoom ,pan or change any parameter of the fractal, both new and old contents will be shown (you will get for example, double images).

An important note: By the pressing the Render or the Continue button, the preview panel will turn black. Use the Preview button to see the fractal while its being calculated).

The Render Wheel

This is a yellow wheel that appears once the rendering process started (by pressing the Start or the Continue button). It begins to rotate while the fractal is being calculated. It disappears once you press the Stop button.

Rotation Control

Labeled “Rot”, this control has four options:

TBll, Free trackball rotation
Xr, X axis rotation.
Yr, Y axis rotation.
Zr, Z axis rotation.

Use the left mouse button over the view window to make the desired rotations.

Position Control

Labeled “Trans”, this control defines the position, of the fractal on the view window.
Its has four options:

XYt, Free X and Y translations.
Xt, Translations only in the X axis.
Yt, Translations only in the Y axis.
Zt, Translations in the Z axis.

Use the left mouse button over the view window to make the desired translations.

The Zoom Control

This control defines how much the fractal is zoomed in the view windows. It's a slider that you can move using the left mouse button. You can also zoom using the mouse wheel.

The Help and Quit buttons

The Help button for the moment brings you an online help (situated at www.incendia.net), and the Quit button just closes the program.

Deprecated Controls

The Load and Save Parameters Buttons (Incendia EX)

This button is used for loading the example parameters that comes with Incendia.
The file extension used is “.par”.
Since Incendia EX VI, the Save parameter button is deprecated in favor of the Save/Load Data buttons.
The reason of this change is because the texture data and many other binary elements cannot be included in the text based parameters.

The Fractal and Main Control Panel

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