Incendia Fractals -Incendia Next 1.8 Release Notes

Incendia Next v1.8.1 Release Notes

Release date: 21/7/2023

This new release is for implementing several new features on Incendia, such as GPU rendering (in progress!), new Voxel generation options and new shaders.

Also, on this release, the Incendia companion programs (Attractors, Quilts, Sphere, Snowflake and HexQuilts) are included in separated installers.

What's New:

PNG Transparencies

PNG image export now support Alpha channels in two modes:

Exclude Background: Export only the Fractal Surface. The background is completely transparent.
Map Fog To Alpha: The Alpha values are sampled from the Environment Fog.

Surface Roughness

This shader is available in the ambient panel. It can change the "metallic" look of the fractal surface.

Voxel Slices

This option (available when the Voxel Engine is enabled) exports the voxel cube into a series of PNG slices.

Animation example of consecutive voxel layers from the above fractal:

Changes:

The Main Window top bar is now dark. This prevents the contrast between Incendia and the Windows controls.
Several interface elements are now reorganized, also renamed and rescaled.
Multiple optimizations in the render engine.
Geometrica options are currently removed from Incendia. A Geometrica based module is in development.
Bitmap export are removed. Incendia nows uses PNG for exporting.

Bug Fixes:

Volumetric fog renders causing crashes or getting stuck in the export process.
The Glow shader brightness was incorrectly scaled, causing an extremely bright fog over the fractal scene.
The fractal scale, reset and rotation controls didn't clear the render panel.
Several crashes in the Blocks Fractals Engine.
Multiple small fixes in the program.