This is a video of my port of SubBlues amazing Pixel Bender plugin found here: subblue.com/projects/fractal_explorer for Quartz Composer.

I ripped the auto-generated GLSL out of Adobes Pixel Bender using some underhanded techniques and shoved it into a QC Plugin with some required modifications. The video shows the Vertex Noise qc patch from Toneburst * as a the source input image and pushes it through fractal transforms in realtime.

You can slide the image through the 'fractal space' using a technique called 'Orbit Trapping'** , and it respects alpha for showing iterations behind the topmost iteration.

The plugin uses hard to parse machine generated GLSL so deciphering it and tuning it for QC has been quite a chore. The exposed controls need a lot of tweaking to be human friendly, but the patch is already usable and decently fast if you keep the iteration count relatively low. Forgive the spastic inspector controls showing up, I just wanted to give a taste of some of the controls and the output, as I think its really lovely and can be suited for many different styles.

All credit to Subblue for putting the Pixel Bender file out for public consumption. Really nice. Check out the PDF on the project page, its worth looking at.

*machinesdontcare.wordpress.com/2008/02/01/more-vertex-noise-fun/ - I highly suggest digging through the archives here, amazing stuff from toneburst.

**fractaldomains.com/tutorial/orbit/orbit_2.html