So I just dove into this today... a whole new wild world of, er, something. I'm not 100% clear what's happening here. Well, NOBODY seems to be 100% clear on what's happening. This is a very unique method of creating art, but there's truly amazing compositions out there. This is done via a program called Mandelbulb 3D, this giant complicated mess of a program with 5 billion functions that do who knows what.
I'd sorta call this "exploratory art". The only form of art where you might use FPS-style controls to manipulate the final image by moving through it. Unlike drawing or painting, you dont start out with a blank canvas. You start out with a demented fractal mess, and twist, rotate, alter, and move through it, while transforming all sorts of aspects by changing parameters and hoping the image doesnt go bonkers. There's a lot of math. None of which I understand. But you dont need to understand... you just need to be willing to experiment, preferrably while not going mad in the process. The more you experiment as you work on each individual thing, the more you start to get a sense of what each parameter is doing to the model as a whole.
It's better to show what I mean rather than attempt my absolutely futile explanations.
This is the first one I did. This didnt take all that long. It is only a small part of a large, vaguely spherical fractal ball. I think I did pretty decently with the colors and lighting here.
This is actually the very same 3D model as the first. I simply moved around it and got much closer. As this is a fractal model, you can get REALLY close and there'll still be tons of detail. But this was close enough. Creating this image was mostly about color selection, and learning more about the screwball lighting system. This stuff is hideously complicated. This took awhile to make.
This godawful thing took 5 billion years to do. It started out as this hideous flat spiked mess which looked NOTHING like what is in the image. After enough manipulation, I got what resembled a Borg Cube that had been attacked by space termites. Camera work and further parameter altering created some indentations. Exploration and camera placement got me this shape. And then I nearly went mad trying to deal with coloring, lighting, and shadows.
This image proves that I have no understanding of color theory. I mean, just look at that freaking thing.
I'm probably going to work on this one more further. I dont want to alter the shape or the camera position, but I'm determined to get better coloration, lighting, and shadows.
There's sooooooooo much more to learn about this program. It can even create full animations/videos.
This is REALLY processor intensive though. Holy heck. Moreso than anything else I have on this machine. Artists who focus on this sort of thing (and there are plenty of them) will want monster rigs to handle this, unless they want it to take 10x as long as it does to make these. Particularly for those making animations. It can take like 10 days to render a 3 minute animation. 10 straight days of the PC doing ONE task.
Anyway, so that's all I've got for now. Definitely more incoming, as I learn more and come up with things that dont suck. What I dont show here is the 15 or so failed experiments...
EDIT: THOSE ARE PREVIEW RENDERS!!!! What the heck! I didnt even realize. That's the LOWEST quality of rendering.
I'd sorta call this "exploratory art". The only form of art where you might use FPS-style controls to manipulate the final image by moving through it. Unlike drawing or painting, you dont start out with a blank canvas. You start out with a demented fractal mess, and twist, rotate, alter, and move through it, while transforming all sorts of aspects by changing parameters and hoping the image doesnt go bonkers. There's a lot of math. None of which I understand. But you dont need to understand... you just need to be willing to experiment, preferrably while not going mad in the process. The more you experiment as you work on each individual thing, the more you start to get a sense of what each parameter is doing to the model as a whole.
It's better to show what I mean rather than attempt my absolutely futile explanations.
This is the first one I did. This didnt take all that long. It is only a small part of a large, vaguely spherical fractal ball. I think I did pretty decently with the colors and lighting here.
This is actually the very same 3D model as the first. I simply moved around it and got much closer. As this is a fractal model, you can get REALLY close and there'll still be tons of detail. But this was close enough. Creating this image was mostly about color selection, and learning more about the screwball lighting system. This stuff is hideously complicated. This took awhile to make.
This godawful thing took 5 billion years to do. It started out as this hideous flat spiked mess which looked NOTHING like what is in the image. After enough manipulation, I got what resembled a Borg Cube that had been attacked by space termites. Camera work and further parameter altering created some indentations. Exploration and camera placement got me this shape. And then I nearly went mad trying to deal with coloring, lighting, and shadows.
This image proves that I have no understanding of color theory. I mean, just look at that freaking thing.
I'm probably going to work on this one more further. I dont want to alter the shape or the camera position, but I'm determined to get better coloration, lighting, and shadows.
There's sooooooooo much more to learn about this program. It can even create full animations/videos.
This is REALLY processor intensive though. Holy heck. Moreso than anything else I have on this machine. Artists who focus on this sort of thing (and there are plenty of them) will want monster rigs to handle this, unless they want it to take 10x as long as it does to make these. Particularly for those making animations. It can take like 10 days to render a 3 minute animation. 10 straight days of the PC doing ONE task.
Anyway, so that's all I've got for now. Definitely more incoming, as I learn more and come up with things that dont suck. What I dont show here is the 15 or so failed experiments...
EDIT: THOSE ARE PREVIEW RENDERS!!!! What the heck! I didnt even realize. That's the LOWEST quality of rendering.
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