My 3D fractal art

[Misery]

That looks awesome, the first one would remind me of some sort of El Dorado with an alien oblivion portal opening above it (don't ask me why I thought about that).

How much time to render each one?

Well, the 3D stuff are what take the longest to render and what takes the longest to make. Probably 70% of the process consists of arguing with the navigator, and it is CONSTANTLY trying to re-render the preview image during the entire thing.

Here, have a look at this:

If you've never used Mandelbulb 3D before, that's an example of some of the process of making one of those. You can see the whole thing blur in and out as I move sliders and shift the camera. As you might expect, the complexity of the object changes that quite a bit. The object in that pic up above is much more processor-intensive than the one in the video, so everything took far longer. I'd say the final render probably took about 2 minutes to do. The purple background was done in JWildfire and took almost no time at all, it was very simple.

That green & violet spiral thing with the bit in the center, probably about 30 seconds. Technically that one was rendering 2 at once, the "star" in the middle is actually copy of the very same weird spiral thing, but with various values changed and a different gradient.

Also if you want to see a bit more, I did this blog post not too long ago:

Learning some new stuff. Complicated stuff.

Also shows the finished version of what was in the video. The final renders are always the longest.

 

[barbarian]

Yeah, I used Mandelbulb in my attempts and have read your blog post. Thought your renderings would take longer. I think videos are the ones that really a bunch of time.

 

[Misery]

Yeah, I used Mandelbulb in my attempts and have read your blog post. Thought your renderings would take longer. I think videos are the ones that really a bunch of time.

Oh yes, the videos take a loooooooong time even on a total monster of a PC. And that's just the short crappy vids I've made. Each required about 3-4 hours of render time. Well, that's for Mandelbulb anyway, I've not tried to animate anything in JWildfire.

I hear that for the people that are a lot more professional at this, it can take like, what, 10 straight days of JUST rendering, 24/7, to produce like a 4 minute video? But that's super high quality stuff made by people who really are darned good at it. Whereas I have no bloody idea what I'm doing.

Honestly the one problem with all of this stuff is that there's so little out there in terms of proper tutorial videos and whatnot. Still so many things I dont understand, and nowhere to really get an explanation of them. Like, in that object with the purple background, I spent WAY too much time just arguing with the navigator. Why? Because I'd hit S to back the camera up, and the program basically went "Ah yes, you hit S, that means you want to ZOOM IN FIVE BILLION TIMES" which is what it proceeded to do. So the camera was nigh-impossible to control (and I have no idea just how I managed to get it pointed at that spot in the final image). But it only does that when presented with certain specific formulas. WHY does it do that? What causes it? I have no idea, and neither does Google. So that's frustrating.

 

[Misery]

Okay, awesome stuff today:

I learned a bunch more stuff today. The use of scripts, and how to make custom gradients. The script use was easy. The gradient creation was not. It was the only way to get the colors to be the way I wanted them though.

And then the 2nd image is the first one run through Kaleider, because of course it is.

 

[Wolfsage]

Small thought. Try Spiderweb imagery.

 

[Misery]

Spiderweb imagery

Do you mean, try to make a fractal that has a "web" sorta look to it?

I think I could pull that off... maybe?

Or did you mean something else?

 

[Wolfsage]

Do you mean, try to make a fractal that has a "web" sorta look to it?

I think I could pull that off... maybe?

Or did you mean something else?

The web look. I feel like you could bring out a unique beauty with this art.

 

[Misery]

The web look. I feel like you could bring out a unique beauty with this art.

I suppose I could give it a shot.

Probably will look a bit wonky though. Making fractal art aint an exact science... well, not when I'm the one doing it anyway.

 

[Misery]

The web look. I feel like you could bring out a unique beauty with this art.

Okay, I did come up with a couple of things, but I dunno if they really work:

Does that look web-ish? I'm not quite sure.

That second one was quite the process to do.

 

[Wolfsage]

Okay, I did come up with a couple of things, but I dunno if they really work:

View attachment 66616

View attachment 66617

Does that look web-ish? I'm not quite sure.

That second one was quite the process to do.

It's beautiful. I can see the work you put into it. Well done.

 

[Misery]

Alright, I used a different program to create that original image this time.

Frax on iOS (with the paid "pro" upgrade that unlocks 50 squillion features). Very impressed by what it can do.

Unlike my previous stuff, this is not a flame-type fractal. Instead it's a... er... uh... you know, Mandelbrot into Julia... look, I dont understand all this stuff yet. But it's a whole other way to create fractal art.

And then of course I ran it through Kaleider.

 

[Wolfsage]

View attachment 66655

View attachment 66656

View attachment 66657

Alright, I used a different program to create that original image this time.

Frax on iOS (with the paid "pro" upgrade that unlocks 50 squillion features). Very impressed by what it can do.

Unlike my previous stuff, this is not a flame-type fractal. Instead it's a... er... uh... you know, Mandelbrot into Julia... look, I dont understand all this stuff yet. But it's a whole other way to create fractal art.

And then of course I ran it through Kaleider.

Magnificent.

 

[Misery]

More of that type.

That 3rd one is my favorite.

Funky thing about these though: the result in the final render is often not quite what you're seeing when you're actually working with it. That last one, the black sections were more... splotchy. Looking like a bit of a spreading, inky void. But they sort of "thinned out" with the final render, adding more detail to the center part than I thought would be there.

The sucky part though is doing this on my stupid tiny phone. Maybe it's about time for a new tablet.

 

[Misery]

Went a bit more advanced this time. Kinda a slow day here on the island, so I really took my time with all of these.

#1 isnt particularly special in terms of traits, but it took a bloody long time to get that texture/color/lighting just right.

#2 is special in that it is a "mini Mandelbrot". The Mandelbrot fractal apparently contains about 5 bazillion copies of itself, which... well, it's probably best not to think too hard about it. While diving through parts of the overall thing, I found my first mini and decided to work with it. Oddly, the Frax program has a lot of these minis registered in its library; when you find one that is within that set, it marks it down, and tells you which one you found. Gives you a number. There are 10000 of these, so... kinda amazing that I stumbled upon #1 in the list before any other. I later found a second one, which was #502.

#3 is all about the texture. Every one of these fractal programs seems to be good at doing different things, even when working with the same type of fractal. Frax here is all about that texturing... it is REALLY good at it. Once I realized what I had, getting the colors to go along with it wasnt too hard.

#4 is a Kaleider render of #3. But this time, I learned a bunch more of the program's functions to do a more advanced render. The result is pretty wild and the laptop nearly exploded trying to do it.

I swear, as I keep going with fractal art overall, Kaleider is likely to become one of my most-used programs. I should definitely work towards learning its deeper features.

 

[Misery]

That second one, which I have named "Bone Spur", is probably the most unique one yet. The shape was easy to find. The texture and coloring took quite a bit of work.

 

[Misery]

I'm not actually too clear on how that first one happened, but it did. Zoom in on it, there is a huge amount of detail there... it's a large render.

Second one is another Kaleider creation. Super pleased with it.

 

[Misery]

Well that was freakin' complicated. Had to learn some new functions to make this one happen.

 

[Misery]

This would be easier if the process to do these wasnt so strange.

 

[Misery]

Aha, I am learning more about creating these things, whatever they are.

The first one is a fairly simple fractal spiral thing created in Frax, and then run through Liquib to create that sort of violent twist in the center.

The second one is actually a variant of the first, with very heavy effects of various types applied to it in Kaleider. While the hue of it is a little odd, I'm darned pleased with how it came out.

 

[barbarian]

The purple-dark blue hue is so beautiful IMO, please keep working on that!