Variation Sets
Fractal Architect, out of the box, provides a 3D variation set,
Core 3D, and a 2D variation set,
Flam3 Legacy.
When you first open the app, the Core 3D is the active set. You can
create your own variation sets very easily.
Immense Variations Library
Fractal Architect 3D comes with 375 variation types in its variations library.
- 283 2D Variations
- 92 3D Variations
- includes 15 Direct color supporting variations
Note: Fractal Architect 2 just had 98 2D variation types.
The variations library and the OpenCL kernel templates are licensed with the
GNU Public License version 3. Complete source code for all variations and the OpenCL kernel templates are included in the app package.
The individual variations were created by the Apophysis user and development community, the JWildfire developer, and the Flam4CUDA developers. The original variation source code was translated to the OpenCL C language and is used by the OpenCL kernel templates.
Historical Note: the developer of Fractal Architect was the developer of the open source Flam4CUDA for Mac app.
No DLL's
The OpenCL rendering engine does not support DLL's and instead creates the renderer from the OpenCL source code at runtime. There is a one time render engine compilation step.
The compile step is fast except for the Intel HD 4000 and 5000 GPU's have very long time compile times. The Intel CPU compile times are very fast.
Both CPU and GPU Rendering
OpenCL supports rendering on either CPU or GPU (if your Mac has an OpenCL supported discrete or integrated GPU). Intel Iris GPU's are only supported on OS X Mavericks.
Render Performance
Macs with discrete Nvidia or ATI GPUs can render much faster than CPU rendering. The Intel Iris GPUs are not as powerful.
