Fractal effect
The Fractal effect renders the Mandelbrot or Julia set, creating colorful textures. When you first apply the effect, the picture you see is the classic sample of the Mandelbrot set; the set is the area that is colored black. Any pixel outside the set is colorized, depending on how close it is to the set.
This effect works with 8-bpc and 16-bpc color.
Spaceship layer (top left) composited over layer with Mandelbrot
fractal with Lightness Gradient palette (bottom left) and Julia
fractal (bottom right)
- Set Choice
- Specifies the set used. Mandelbrot is the typical Mandelbrot set. Mandelbrot Inverse is the Mandelbrot set mathematically inverted. Julia always changes depending on the center point from the Mandelbrot set and can produce the set of all possible Julia sets. Julia Inverse is the inverse of the Julia set. To see a Julia set, you may want to set the magnification to a negative value, because these sets tend to fill up the complex plane outside the normal boundary. Mandelbrot Over Julia is the same as Mandelbrot, except that it does change when the Julia center point changes. Mandelbrot Inverse over Julia is the same as Mandelbrot Inverse, except that it does change when the Julia center point changes.
- Mandelbrot, Julia
- Specify the settings for the specified set. X (Real) and Y (Imaginary) specify the pixels at the center of the image for either the Mandelbrot or Julia set. Magnification specifies the magnification of the effect. Escape Limit specifies how many times the calculation looks for a color for a given pixel before it assigns the color black. It also sets the maximum number of line segments the Selection tool can use when tracing the path of a point. Higher numbers require longer render times.
- Color
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Specifies the color of the effect:
- Overlay
- Displays a ghosted version of the opposite set. For example, when viewing the Julia set, use this control to display a ghosted version of the Mandelbrot set. When you select Overlay, a white cross hair with a black drop shadow appears so you can see the exact point at the center of the opposite set. This control is useful because the Julia set depends on the center point of the Mandelbrot set.
- Transparency
- Specifies whether black pixels are transparent. If you choose Solid Color from the Palette menu, this control specifies whether everything inside or outside the set is transparent.
- Palette
- Specifies the palette to use when drawing the set. Lightness Gradient creates a gradient that ranges from black to white, passing through the hue specified by the Hue control. Then it applies the same gradient eight more times, each time using the hue 45° away on the color wheel. The number of colors in the gradient is specified by the Cycle Steps control. Hue Wheel uses all the color from the Hue color wheel, with maximum brightness and saturation. Black And White uses alternating bands of black and white. Solid Color turns everything transparent except the inside of the set, which uses the color specified by the Hue control. Select Transparent to get the opposite result.
- Hue
- Specifies the hue for solid colors and the starting hue for color gradients. This control works well for creating smooth color changes or for cycling through the palette. Cycle Steps specifies the number of bands of different color that appear before the cycle starts over. Cycle Offset specifies where, other than the beginning, a cycle starts.
- Edge Highlight
- Highlights the edges between color bands. This control requires low-quality mode. If you want to use high-quality edge highlighting, use the Find Edges effect instead.
- High Quality Settings
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Specify the oversampling settings for the effect:
- Oversample Method
- Specifies the method used to oversample the effect: Edge Detect-Fast-May Miss Pixels performs a simple edge detection and oversamples only those pixels. This option is the fastest, especially in areas with a lot of solid color, such as black, and it generally produces results indistinguishable from Brute Force. Brute Force-Slow-Every Pixel oversamples every pixel in the image. It is slow but precise.
- Oversample Factor
- Specifies the amount of oversampling to perform. For example, a value of 4 specifies that each pixel is sampled 16 times (4x4=16) and that the average color is used. Higher values produce better quality output but require longer render times.
Use tools with the Fractal effect
When the Fractal effect is selected in the Effect Controls panel, you can use After Effects tools in the following way. (If you don’t want the Fractal tools active, deselect the effect before using tools.)
- Drag the Selection tool to see if a point’s path lies within the set. If the path leads out of the bounded rectangle (-2, -2, 2, 2), it has gone into infinity; in such a case, the starting-point color is based on how many line segments it takes to reach infinity. If the path ends within the rectangle, it’s colored black.
- Use the Zoom tool to zoom in or out on a particular point, or hold down Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac OS), click and hold the Magnifying tool over the center of the image, and navigate from the center. For example, to zoom straight in, stay in the center; to move up, drag up just a little and then quickly move back to the center.
- Use the Hand tool to pan the image. Press Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac OS) to pan the opposite fractal. For example, when viewing the Julia set, press Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac OS) to pan the Mandelbrot set and see how the Julia set depends on the center point of the Mandelbrot set.
- Use the arrow keys to pan the center point by 1 pixel. Press Shift as you press an arrow key to adjust the point by 10 pixels. Press Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac OS) as you press an arrow key to adjust the center point of the opposite set.
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