Absolutely Brand New User

I am absolutely brand new with this software and am finding the tutorials frustrating in that the images do not seem to coordinate with the views I see in the toolbox section at the right of the screen. The tutorial images seem to be outdated and therefore I can't learn the objective at hand.

I'd like to start with simply modifying a formula. Any help is much appreciated.

I'm not quite sure from your description what the problem is exactly but I will have a stab at offering some help...

I am assuming you are using Windows (I am unfamiliar with the Mac version and whether the controls are the same so your mileage may vary).

At the very least, to begin playing with formulas and fractals, you need to see the Layer Properties window. If this is not visible on the right hand side then press Shift+F2 or use the Window > Tool windows menu to summon it into view. You can have it floating around if you wish or docked on the right.

I will just add that if, for some reason, you cannot see all the details that you think you should be seeing just hover your mouse over the horizontal line at the bottom of the tool window... it may be that parts are hidden... try clicking/dragging that line up or down to show more or less of the work area on that window. You can adjust the height of all those long thin windows to suit your needs. It's many years since I looked at those tutorials but I think you should still see pretty much what is being described. The design and colouring of the windows may have been updated but basically the underlying functions and layout are very similar, if not the same as that of a few years ago.

Back to your question about modifying the formula... the middle tab of this Layer Properties tool window is labelled "Formula". Click on this tab to see the parameter area where you can play with the numbers to change the structure of the formula (in conjunction with zooming and generally using your mouse to further explore the formula in the fractal image window using click& drag and other actions). Changing the Starting Point (often also called Seed or Start value or similar) on the Formula tab can yield interesting results straight away - try right-clicking in these input slots and choose "Explore" to get a live preview of the changes when you move the mouse around in the Explore window that pops up. Click when you find something pleasing/interesting.

To change to a different formula click on the top right (yellow-ish) icon on this tab - a browser window will open where you can explore the hundreds of formulas available to you. If you have an idea of what you want you can search for a formula here. You will, of course, have had to have downloaded all the formulas before you can do this - look up the Help about how to Update Public Formulas if you haven't done so already.

Also on this Layer Properties window, is a tab on the right labelled "Outside". This is where you work with an "Outside colouring" (some formulas use an "Inside colouring", there's a tab for that one too). These Outside/Inside colourings are another type of formula that add different shapes, details and/or texturing to the skeleton of your formula design. You can add colour here too.

I hope that this very brief introduction helps you get started! I would suggest you try and persevere with the Help tutorials as they will give you some basic instruction on how to do things in UF. The formulas and colourings suggested have been selected because they are good ones for beginners. Good luck!

I too am a complete beginner and have been tirelessly going through the tutorials over and over again. I am finding it very frustrating that some of the text paste instructions do not open the next stage of the tutorial. I have asked if the latest edition of UF has not had the tutorials updated.

I think the programme is very good but is not easy to follow for a complete beginner.

Can anyone else suggest other tutorials to get a beginner up and running. I am an Apple Mac user!!

I am not the developer, just a user trying to help.

I use UF on Windows but I think you are right: there is a problem with some of the copy/paste instructions in the tutorial.

Here is my take on it:

On Windows it's an easy matter to click/copy then paste. It appears to be some sort of Javascript function that copies the code. It occurred to me that if this click to copy function isn't working for some reason (which may be the case with you guys) then just selecting and copying the code to the clipboard as you would any other snippet of text would/should work just as well. And in normal circumstances it does, providing the copied text is formatted correctly.

And there's the problem right there... only some of the copy/paste codes in the tutorials work when selected manually for copying.

A workaround:

I've had a quick rummage through the tutorials and found the following pages have problems. New users should find copying my text snippets here, below the page titles, should paste ok as instructed in the tutorial. If not please let me know and I will have another look.

Synchronizing the Julia Seed:
-0.2589852008/-0.1395348837

Twist transformation:
-0.65/-0.18125

Introduction to masking:
-0.815/0.235

Note:
I've only listed the three problem ones. Other code snippets in the online tutorial appear to work just fine if you highlight the blue text with the mouse then copy/paste as directed. Even if you slip up and copy a few words on either side of the code UF will still be able to recognise and use the instructions you've copied.

I hope this helps!

Frederik:

If you see this perhaps you could take a look at the tutorials on the pages listed above? It seems to be the Complex Values that could be written better (as shown above).

About the copy/paste problem: the tutorials that you can find online have been updated some time ago to no longer use the Javascript trick mentioned above for copying and pasting, because that doesn't work with modern browsers unfortunately. Instead, just manually copy and paste the text as described by Chris above.
http://www.ultrafractal.com/help/tutorials/tutorials.html

Now the Mac version has a slightly different user interface so the screen shots in the tutorials don't map 100% -- but they should be close enough to be able to follow the tutorials. @bontedj: Could you let me know which images you find confusing so I can help you out?

I do recommend that you use the included help file in the Mac version (via the Help menu in Ultra Fractal) because it has been updated specifically for the Mac version. Although I haven't redone all the screen shots.

Ah! Just to clarify... I didn't realise the tutorials were also published on the UF website here. when I wrote the post above I was looking at the tutorials as I found them within the program interface: Help menu --> Tutorials.

I hope I didn't add to any confusion when I described the Help version as being "online"!

I use Windows 10 here and the javascript function to copy the parameters works just fine here. Which made it an easy matter for me to list the data snippets above.

--

Thanks for your reply Frederik. Hopefully all this will help users working their way through the tutorials.

Chris (Velvet Glove) has done a series of great and very helpful freebie Tuts... which I can recommend... I also put together a pretty stacked DVD on getting up to speed with UF5 (7+ Hours worth) .... If anyone is interested in purchasing a copy (Windows or Mac) the details can be found here: Learning Ultra Fractal 5 (Creative Edition) through the eyes of an Artist

if you have any issues with links there please just message me here.

Apologies 2 that the demo video is broken... It was hosted on a youtube account I abandoned and I have no back up. I may put together another promo video if I can find the time