For this version I made a lot of internal refactorings to improve rendering quality and hybrid-fractal-support. Also, there is a new experimental hybrid-container which uses a variation- or scalar-field to modulate the iteration-counts of the fractal formulas inside the hybrid. This creates coordinate-dependent hybrid-geometry. It is a little bit hard to setup, but a lot of fun to play with. Co…
I have completely re-implemented the preview now, so that it is also using the compute-shader-pipeline and produces images which are more close to the final renders. And more important, it can also render very "heavy" scenes, which was the largest problem before. You will encounter increased initial shader-compile times, but the shader compile time between preview and final render will be reduc…
Another update with a lot of new stuff and fixes: - the flame skies now finally work (there was the problem, that *.exr-file-support is removed from exported Godot-builds, so I had to create my own ExrLoader class) - new surface-objects (by a new container-type) which can be applied to both fractals and primitives - new primitives and corresponding DEcombinate-formulas - some new useful fractal…
VERSION 3.35.2629 (30.04.2026): - mandelbro3d: - added sun primitive (SWAN-1440) - added moon primitive (SWAN-1441) - added support for really transparent portions of surfaces, for example needed by some of the new sky objects (SWAN-1443) - dont include procedural textures into the deafult scene (in order to reduce shader compile time at startup) (SWAN-1444, SWAN-1446) - fixed: rendered preview…
Changelog: VERSION 3.32.2597 (27.04.2026): - mandelbro3d: - use formula-picker when adding a new primitive (SWAN-1414) - use formula-picker when adding a new fractal formula (SWAN-1415) - objects and lights can now also follow the camera (SWAN-1416) - added "headlamp" preview mode for consistent preview-lighting, nevertheless where the camera is (SWAN-1418) - fixed: when entering a numerical va…
With this update come really many new things: - introducing wall-objects: helping to combine classical architectural elements with fractals - a collection of new sky objects - a collection of new ground objects - a large collection of new procedural textures - the ability to use flame fractals as HDRI sky for interesting lighting effects - the ability to use flame fractals as procedural texture…
This update brings new fur/hair-controls which can be combined with any material. But, please note, that computing fur is a real heavy operation. Even compiling the shaders can take up to minutes! If you encounter GPU-timeouts during rendering, decrease tile-size and/or quality budget. But, it can give really nice results! Also, there are a lot of new procedural textures. To improve the handlin…
Complete changelog: VERSION 3.10.2353 (14.04.2026): - mandelbro3d: - also added a "Pick Position"-position for light sources (SWAN-1147) - fixed: hybrid fractals sometimes render different in preview than in hq/hq+ mode (SWAN-1157) - fixed: Godot sees not the OIDN-executable under when Windows when added to PATH variable (SWAN-1146) - added new Mycelium-procedural-texture (SWAN-1148) - added ne…
This update introduces procedural textures for primitives (colormaps, bumpmaps, material maps and emission map) and comes with some new shapes, both as primitives and as DEcombinate formulas. Also, a few bugs have been fixed. Happy rendering! Complete changelog: VERSION 3.6.2316 (12.04.2026): - mandelbro3d: - created Turbulence-procedural-texture (SWAN-1111) - created Voronoi-procedural-texture…
JWildfireSwan 1.0: Flame Editor Initially, JWildfireSwan was intended solely as an editor for flame fractals. Admittedly with high ambitions, but only for this type of fractal art. Then came the extension to AI-assisted fractal art (“ai img2img”) based on flame fractals (I know that the use of AI in art is a subject of controversy in some quarters, and I share some of the concerns. Nevertheless…
I have made some fundamental changes to the ray-marcher, which should improve the render quality on small objects with many details substantly. But it may be the case that some existing scenes of you need adjustments to give the right results. If you encounter "incomplete objects", try the following (in this order): - set "Max Distance" to 60.0 - increase "Work Budget" to 20000 - set "DE Factor…
This is a major update bringing the fascinating realm of true 3d-fractals to you, as a free update! Rather than creating a separate app, I have integrated it into swan as new module, which is called MandelBro3D. There are many features which work the same for flames and 3d-fractals (like the motion-curves-editor or audio-support), and MandelBro3D also uses the same proven render-pipeline as the…
now I finished the first playable version of the fractal-breakout game. Have fun! complete changelog: VERSION 2.17.1764 (23.01.2026): - chillout bricks: - first working/playable version finished! (SWAN-548) - created levels 51-60 (SWAN-492) - created levels 61-70 (SWAN-493) - created levels 71-80 (SWAN-494) - created levels 81-90 (SWAN-495) - created levels 91-101 (SWAN-496) - separate level ge…
complete changrelog: VERSION 2.16.1753 (14.01.2026): - chillout bricks: - added option to quit the game in pause-mode (SWAN-399) - create video about adding audio to flames and creating audio-synchronized animations (SWAN-545) - improved handling of save window-position of the main-window which sometimes reset automatically (SWAN-162) - fixed a bug in the calculation of the "juliac"-variation (…
Merry Christmas! This free update brings 3 new major things: · hdr-image-output · new help-module with links to the user's manual and official videos · major ui overhaul: elements are now better grouped and distinguishable from each other. Also, you can add/remove multiple points at once on motion-curve- and gradient-editor And, much more. Complete changelog: VERSION 2.9.1682 (24.12.2025): - ad…
After 500 commits, 10000 file edits and completing 200 tasks I finally finished JWildfireSwan 2.0 which comes as free update! Together with some minor enhancements there comes a brand-new module: flame painter. In short, flame painter allows to visually compose flames of flames by using an instancing-like approach. It is a substantial extension to the "classic" fractal-flame-algorithm. It allow…
I now improved the new ppost_*_noise-variations, which allow to modulate flames to give them a more organic look. Also, there are some other small fixes. Complete changelog: VERSION 1.1.1394 (01.10.2025): - application-settings: only display top-level items in the tree-view to make the UI more clear (SWAN-157) - application-settings: changed the settings panel on the right to occopy any free sp…
After three years of development , about 70 blog posts , doing a lot of research , writing about 50000 lines of TypeScript+WebGL and other code (initial Swan version), writing about 150000 lines of GDScript+GLSL-code , making about 2500 commits , it is finally here: today I'm releasing Swan version 1.0! There was a lot of testing and bugfixing the last days, but I also added three new major fea…
I now solved the problem, that some fractals fade to black during editing or realtime-animation-preview. And, as usual, there is much more, see the full changelog : VERSION 0.121.1371 (15.09.2025): - realtime-animation-preview and realtime-editing: the renderer automatically analyzes the iteration-buffers and performs a re-initialization when too many samples are turning to infinite/invalid num…
Here comes the last large update before release of version 1.0, so we are almost there :-) The current state of the software comes very close to my initial vision, where one piece was missing until now: audio integration. You can now attach an audio-file to your fractal. This audio file is played when playing an animation preview, can be used for motion-curve-modulation (fft) and is encoded int…
I now added the option to modulate motion-curves by numeric formulas in realtime. This may be used to add certain features on top of an existing motion-curve or generate the whole curve in an algorithmic way. You can use any GDScript expression here that evaluates to a floating point number. Available parameters: time_value, curve_value, frame, fps, bpm, offset, amp, freq, phase, pulse_width. T…
Last week I was very busy to implement some improvements to the renderer (both final and preview) and make the handlnig of motion curves more easy. Rendering allows now for a seconds DE pass. And you can create or view motion curves by right-clicking at the label of the flame-attribute in the main-editor. And you can revert an attribute to its default value by double-clicknig at the label. Also…
The last days I fixed a lot of issues (both regarding rendering (which enhances the rendering a lot, in some areas) and some variations ) and added some useful other things: · variation-attributes are now synchronized between variation-browser and main-editor, i. e. you can now see how variation-parameters affect the currently selected fractal in the editor · less automatic resizes in the trian…
Last week I analyzed a strange behaviour regarding the calculation of the alpha channel on low-density areas. This affected flames with non-black-backgrounds. This has been fixed now. There are other improvements regarding the consistency of renders between JWildfire and JWildfireSwan. Also, I'm writing now the storybook for a series of introduction/tutorial videos for Swan. And, there is some…
Finally I found the time to dive into the tonnemapping problems which existed for a while and which affected both final renders and the real-time-preview, but in different ways. The tonemapping is much more stable now, especially in the previews, and overall produces very nice images. Also, I have a added a browser for random-flame-generators, because the listbox had became so long, that it was…
I have now completed the last major feature I had planned for version 1.0: a variant that generates image content with ai txt2img (using the automatic1111 integration) that can be used as basic shapes in fractals. Because the ai-generation takes a significant amount of time it works asynchronous and in multiple passes. In the first passes you will see a placeholder image, which then will be rep…
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