1 Welcome!

This sub-module will enable you to create 3d-models you can use in any available 3d-package to create real 3d-images with refraction-effects, shadows and whatever you want. You could even create solid objects to put onto your (real! :-)) desk using a 3d-printing-service!

But, you will need a lot of patience and a modern computer with at least 8 GB of RAM, otherwise it may also work, but will probably not be much fun.

You may copy this text and paste it into an editor like Wordpad for easier reading (<Strg+A> to select all, <Strg+C> to copy it, and then use "Paste" in your editor).

2 How does it work?

The basic idea is the one of a CT scan. You scan an object slice by slice to obtain a model of the whole. The make it work, the object (i. e. the fractal) must to be a (pseudo-)3d-fractal. A "slice" is just a 2D-render of this object at a certain "scan-position" (z-coordinate). So, there are five steps involved:

3 What do we need?

You will need a lot of passion, some decent computer hardware and a few software packages for various tasks. But you do not need any expensive commercial software, anything can be done using fine free software. All of this will be explained in the following sections in detail.

3.1 "Solid" flame fractals

What helps the most is the ability to create "solid" (i. e. not too noisy) flame-fractals, in 3d. But there are many tutorials around which help you. Good candidates to start are the so-called "3D Bubbles", "3D Julian Bubbles" or "Xenophilia".

3.2 The JWildfire volumetric renderer

The JWildfire volumetric renderer is a specialized version of the default renderer and is capable to render a number of images (=slices) in parallel, in order to save time. It is also multi-threaded and can use the whole power of your machine. The parallel computation comes at the cost of higher memory consumption. You can adjust how many slices you want to generate in one step. Imagine that all slices would fit into memory, then you could generate all slices in the same time you would just render one regular image :-)

3.3 The JWildfire Mesh-generator

The built-in mesh-generator uses the marching-cubes algorithm to create a mesh from the previously rendered slices. The mesh-generator is also multi-threaded and this way comes with very decent speed. Please note, that it is absolutely intended that slice-rendering and mesh-generation are two distinct steps. This is because you could create different meshes from the same set of slices by chosing different options like threshold, but generating the slices is rather expensive.

3.4 The free MeshLab-software

The free MeshLab-software is used to clean-up, smooth, reduce, ... your model. You can download it from http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/

3.5 Any 3D-package

Use any 3D-Renderer you want, to finally render the model created in *.obj-format. If you have no idea, where to start: both Blender ( http://www.blender.org/ ) and Bryce ( http://www.daz3d.com/software/bryce) are excellent choices, the latter is not exactly free, but cost only about 20$.

4 Let's create the first model!

4.1 Inside JWildfire

4.3 Inside MeshLab

4.4 Have fun to use the model in your 3d-package

Appendix: A simple example flame to start

Just select the following text (starting with "<flame ", ending with "</flame>") with your mouse and press <Ctrl+C> to copy it into the clipboard, then press the "From-clipboard"-button inside JWildfire to load this flame.
<flame name="JWildfire" version="JWildfire 1.80 ALPHA (18.07.2014)" size="732 412" center="0.07597973873633698 -0.22993868301786188" scale="128.47323641882377" rotate="0.0" filter="1.2" filter_kernel="GAUSSIAN" quality="100.0" background="0.0 0.0 0.0" bg_transparency="0" brightness="4.0" saturation="1.0" gamma="4.0" gamma_threshold="0.04" vibrancy="1.0" contrast="1.0" temporal_samples="1.0" cam_zoom="1.0" cam_pitch="0.9983283321407566" cam_yaw="-1.1588986233242349" cam_persp="0.0" cam_xfocus="0.0" cam_yfocus="0.0" cam_zfocus="0.0" cam_pos_x="0.0" cam_pos_y="0.0" cam_pos_z="0.0" cam_zpos="0.0" cam_dof="0.0" cam_dof_area="0.5" cam_dof_exponent="2.0" resolution_profile="800x600" shading_shading="FLAT" antialias_amount="0.75" antialias_radius="0.36" post_symmetry_type="NONE" post_symmetry_order="3" post_symmetry_centre_x="0.0" post_symmetry_centre_y="0.0" post_symmetry_distance="1.25" post_symmetry_rotation="6.0" frame="1" frame_count="300" >
<xform weight="0.5" color="0.0" mod_gamma="0.0" mod_gamma_speed="0.0" mod_contrast="0.0" mod_contrast_speed="0.0" mod_saturation="0.0" mod_saturation_speed="0.0" symmetry="0.0" pre_blur="1.0" bubble="1.0" oscilloscope="0.2" oscilloscope_separation="1.0" oscilloscope_frequency="3.141592653589793" oscilloscope_amplitude="1.0" oscilloscope_damping="0.0" coefs="1.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 0.0 0.0" chaos="1.0" />
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</flame>