Changing and Exploring Plug-ins

This tutorial assumes you are already familiar with the material in The Basics of UltraFractal 5 and Its Use of Classes.

We will start with a single layer upr with substitutions for Trap Shape and Trap Textures. The upr, image and appearance of the outside tab are shown below. You may have to adjust the show/hide arrows on the parameter/object list to get the same view.

Tutorial_1 {
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}

As can be seen from the image above, the Marble Texture plug-in contains another object, called Perlin Noise Texture. It also has a browse button, so other classes can be plugged into that slot. Look at the indentations. The parameters Wave, Frequency and Amount go with Marble Texture. The parameters Octaves, Persistence, Function and Random Seed go with Perlin Noise Texture. In general, you will need to look at the indentation level to see what parameter goes with what plug-in when you have plug-ins within plug-ins. This brings us to the point of talking about a special kind of class, called a wrapper. Think of a wrapper as something that may not do much itself (although some wrappers do have some interesting functionality), but which provides a convenient way to add a group or groups of related classes. Notice I am using "class", "object" and "plug-in" interchangeably here. Strictly a class is the code, the object is the code in use, and the plug-in refers to how you, the user, manage the object. One of the most powerful wrappers for all types of orbit trap formulas is called TrapShape Merge. Notice I said all types of orbit trap formulas. In addition to Orbit Traps Gradient, written by Damien Jones, other formula writers have written orbit trap coloring formulas, and most of these can use TrapShape plug-ins. We will address some of these formulas in subsequent tutorials. The next example has a upr, an image and a screen shot of the parameter list to illustrate the use of TrapShape Merge. TrapShape Merge is in common.ulb.

Tutorial_2 {
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}

Copy the upr and paste it into UltraFractal. Try changing the merge mode. Currently intersection, union and exclusion have not be coded, so they won't work. Try changing Astroid and Pinch to other Trap Shapes to see the effect. As far as the hierarchy of plug-ins, notice that before the beginning of TrapShape Merge there is a Trap Position plug-in and after all the components of TrapShape Merge there is a Trap Transfer plug-in. These two plug-ins apply to TrapShape Merge in its entirety, while the ones within TrapShape Block apply only to that block. This give the user a great deal of control over the trap shapes.

Notice that Trap Texture (near the bottom of the parameter/plug-in list) has no preceding Trap Position and no following Trap Transfer. For some textures it is desirable to have the additional control that these plug-ins provide. If you click the browse button for Trap Texture you will find that you get a list of trap shapes, as that is the kind of object that plugs into that slot. The code that is used for trap shapes and trap textures is virtually identical in an abstract sense, so shapes and texture are interchangeable. Some trap shapes were best as "shapes" and some work best as "textures", but there is a vast grey area between the two. To get the additional control the use might want over a trap texture, we can use a TrapShape Block, which is in common.ulb. Its the same wrapper we see inside of TrapShape Merge - TrapShape Merge is a wrapper that contains other wrappers! The next upr, image and screen shot illustrate the use of TrapShape Block in the Trap Texture slot.

Tutorial_3 {
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}

Copy the upr and paste it into UltraFractal. Try changing various parameters in Trap Position and Default Gradient Transfer to see the effects. Go to the browser for Trap Texture/TrapShape Block and replace TrapShape Block with fBm (its in dmj5.ulb). This will remove benefits of Trap Shape and Default Gradient Transfer. Try to obtain a nice texture now that the plug-ins from TrapShape Block are no longer available.