So I've started a major project

[Misery]

Look at this thing:

So, I started working on this thing just today. Been at it most of the day.

I'd had a sort of vague idea of something I really wanted to do, after discovering Neocities on the internet somewhat recently. Browsing around that... a LOT of amazing creative stuff. I'm talking like, "old internet" sort of creativity. Seriously, if you've never been there, head over there. It's a wild ride.

Seeing that, and looking at the resources and tools they have available, I figure... you know what, I can make something right here. An interactive site to house a lot of my different art things, both digital and physical.

A lot of inspiration all over that place too, to get ideas.

I had been wanting to do some sort of really "big" project for months now... something more than just rendering single fractals or scribbling on paper. Something special. And finally, early this morning, I got the right idea to work with.

There's a lot of stuff I need to learn to do this. I'd wondered... can I manage this? I've never tried building a site before. I dont know html yet, and I might need a bit more than just that. Things like that. I'm doing my best though to try to remain confident though, instead of what I usually do which is assuming I cant do anything. I figure... you know what, I can make these horribly complicated fractals of all types and it's pretty much second nature now. Some 12 or so apps I've learned to do that stuff. Surely I can handle learning to cobble together an interactive site... right? Boy I hope so.

Picked up this software as well to help in organizing it. I realized, I cant just do this complicated of a project on the fly, which is how I normally do things. I *need* something to keep all the connections mapped out... it's time to start organizing something for like the first time in forever. I'm really not used to doing that.

Ya know what though, I'm finding that stuff like that has been getting easier as my depression slowly lifts, and as the chronic pain slowly recedes (somewhat). It is... nice. It really is. I feel a lot better when I'm DOING things, productive things. Even if it's just something like doing the laundry.

Well... I blame depression for that, but I realized it's not just that. It was also my experiences back in school, all those years ago. It entirely killed off any actual desire to do stuff like this. Anything "work" was just immediately looked at with dread and a "this is stupid, I dont want to do this" attitude. I hadnt always been like that. There was a time when I wanted to be a programmer. I was learning Basic back in the DOS days (using QBasic specifically) and was really into it. And then highschool hit. The excitement and satisfaction of things like that just... died. I stopped trying to learn to code at that point. Stopped doing art. It's only recently that the lingering negative effects of school FINALLY started to fade.

Frustrating, really. Though I know I'm far from the only one who had a terrible experience back in school. But hey... finally getting back to things. It took awhile, but the important thing is that it happens at all, I suppose.

On a side note, I've managed to drastically increase the speed at which I can render stuff like this. A render that previously needed like 25 minutes now only needs like 30 seconds. Each of the images in the flowchart are of enormous resolution, and with full lighting and materials applied to the objects. I tell ya, THAT is satisfying. Turns out it IS possible to push this PC even further.


Now the trick is to just stick to this and keep some real momentum going. That's the hard part, I still struggle with that. I've got my whiteboard, and that helps a lot, but... oh yeah, it's tough. I wonder how super productive people manage that one.

Once I've got something properly functional, I'll be sure to share it. Though that's going to take quite awhile.

 

[Aspychata]

Interesting insight on the past. It's great to see you are embracing your passions and even bringing your trek here and inspire others. I love special interests.

 

[UFO]

My software special interest was killed by career I made out of it. Now I keep all software projects at arm's length. I do some tools and scripts, but only if there is a need for them - nothing for just fun anymore. But back in days before that: I had also 3D-rendering project, but it was the engine and GPU programming, developing special effects renderers and such.

But... Don't be like I was. When you get "something properly functional" as you say it, don't just share it, keep working with it. I usually quit the projects as soon as I got a proof-of-concept working. Projects, that I have actually finished and polished outside salary paying projects, can be counted on one hand.

 

[Dagan]

Digital rabbit hole journey. Cool.

 

[Misery]

My software special interest was killed by career I made out of it. Now I keep all software projects at arm's length. I do some tools and scripts, but only if there is a need for them - nothing for just fun anymore. But back in days before that: I had also 3D-rendering project, but it was the engine and GPU programming, developing special effects renderers and such.

But... Don't be like I was. When you get "something properly functional" as you say it, don't just share it, keep working with it. I usually quit the projects as soon as I got a proof-of-concept working. Projects, that I have actually finished and polished outside salary paying projects, can be counted on one hand.

Eh, I'm not too worried about that one.

If it was related to something else, then yeah, I might drop interest and get burned out after a time, but with the fractal stuff, I could just do this all day (and often have).

There's no end to the experimenting and exploring with these things, and the endless potential just keeps my interest constantly there.

Like, look at this:

I found that floaty thing deep within the cube structure, so I decided it might make a particular point of interest.

I'm thinking that certain actions within the fractal structures might trigger animations to go along with them. So I dropped in some light sources to make the object shine gold, and set up an animation.

The second pic is the same object and location, but I have warped the values that make up the structure. In the animation the glowy thing starts pulling inwards, pops and reforms, and the walls all shift and flow, and then the sides rise, the floor drops, new terrain is revealed, which sort of shifts and grows as it rises up, and that second image is the end of the animation.

I was going to show off the animation here but the individual frames it farts out arent assembled yet... much to my irritation the fractal software itself doesnt actually assemble a movie file out of them, I have to do that elsewhere, so it's not ready to show. But holy heck does it look cool in action.

Though, learning some new tricks recently as well as speeding up the render process makes it even more fun to work with. On my status feed I posted a video of the cube object dissolving, seen from the outside, that involved some new stuff I learned to make that happen.

I've been doing this for years now, and it's kinda amazing to me that it all keeps constantly surprising me with new cool stuff. It gets freaking weird sometimes.

 

[UFO]

Those are beautiful images, I have to say...

Eh, I'm not too worried about that one.

Good. I first thought that you were just having a new project within your interest, but I now realize that this is your interest.

My problem was that I always had more and more things to focus on, so I had to prioritize what projects I work with. Ended up always thinking "I finish this later, now I do this..." Suddenly, when I got working engine with DirectX 10, there was DirectX 11 available and I had to start converting projects to that, and then suddenly there was Vulkan... Not to mention that I also fancied making games, with or without my own engines...

Even thought I can relate to child-Wolff's reaction to missing jigsaw puzzle piece in movie The Accountant, I am more likely to be happy as long I have another jigsaw puzzle waiting, so to say

 

[Nervous Rex]

Eh, I'm not too worried about that one.

If it was related to something else, then yeah, I might drop interest and get burned out after a time, but with the fractal stuff, I could just do this all day (and often have).

There's no end to the experimenting and exploring with these things, and the endless potential just keeps my interest constantly there.

Like, look at this:

View attachment 145522

View attachment 145523

I found that floaty thing deep within the cube structure, so I decided it might make a particular point of interest.

I'm thinking that certain actions within the fractal structures might trigger animations to go along with them. So I dropped in some light sources to make the object shine gold, and set up an animation.

The second pic is the same object and location, but I have warped the values that make up the structure. In the animation the glowy thing starts pulling inwards, pops and reforms, and the walls all shift and flow, and then the sides rise, the floor drops, new terrain is revealed, which sort of shifts and grows as it rises up, and that second image is the end of the animation.

I was going to show off the animation here but the individual frames it farts out arent assembled yet... much to my irritation the fractal software itself doesnt actually assemble a movie file out of them, I have to do that elsewhere, so it's not ready to show. But holy heck does it look cool in action.

Though, learning some new tricks recently as well as speeding up the render process makes it even more fun to work with. On my status feed I posted a video of the cube object dissolving, seen from the outside, that involved some new stuff I learned to make that happen.

I've been doing this for years now, and it's kinda amazing to me that it all keeps constantly surprising me with new cool stuff. It gets freaking weird sometimes.

Those look mesmerizing. I could stare at animations like that for hours. I can't wait to see your site!

 

[Nervous Rex]

I've never tried building a site before. I dont know html yet, and I might need a bit more than just that. Things like that. I'm doing my best though to try to remain confident though, instead of what I usually do which is assuming I cant do anything. I figure... you know what, I can make these horribly complicated fractals of all types and it's pretty much second nature now. Some 12 or so apps I've learned to do that stuff. Surely I can handle learning to cobble together an interactive site... right? Boy I hope so.

I set up a website to share my math projects, but I took the lazy way out - I used Wix. It's not as flexible as setting up a website from scratch, but for me it works because I can focus on writing up my recreational math articles and I don't have to learn HTML.

 

[Crabcore]

Ooo, I was posting a lot about Neocities before I took a hiatus on here. I'm glad you discovered this gem, too!

HTML and CSS are super easy to get up and running with! My memory is hazy, but IIRC you said you had some high-level coding experience before? If so, I think you'll find that these are a million times easier than even OOP, but you can use plenty of that on the backend when the time comes, too! Neocities seems to have a really cool, minimal setup going on, and even their own web-based IDE to get you started!

What do you have in store, something mostly related to your artwork? I love hearing about creative projects like these! And if you ever want to spitball or get some ideas, I love bouncing stuff like this back and forth!

I usually have way to many projects on the back burner, but a silly little Neocities site is certainly one of them

 

[Misery]

HTML and CSS are super easy to get up and running with! My memory is hazy, but IIRC you said you had some high-level coding experience before? If so, I think you'll find that these are a million times easier than even OOP, but you can use plenty of that on the backend when the time comes, too! Neocities seems to have a really cool, minimal setup going on, and even their own web-based IDE to get you started!

My experience is mostly with XML. So, HTML with a different hat on. I mean, a VERY different hat, my previous stuff was all bullet-hell game design, but the way the HTML and XML are structured are so similar that picking up on that structure so far has been effortless.

What do you have in store, something mostly related to your artwork? I love hearing about creative projects like these! And if you ever want to spitball or get some ideas, I love bouncing stuff like this back and forth!

Basically, the idea is an interactive art concept done in an almost adventure game kinda way.

It's easy to take a single fractal object and drop the camera anywhere I want, or do things like twist the shape and properties of the thing, or animate any of that (though that takes more effort and will be used very sparingly).

The object in the upper left of the flowchart there is the starting position, and everything flows off of that. Where I wrote things like "Zoom center field" is basically "user clicks this part of image, move to this next image". There'll be a back button present in most screens to go, well, backwards. Some special functions might appear in different spots depending on what's there. The stuff in the upper right, that section of the cube is very dark, so I figure, lets have a "flashlight" available in those screens, user can toggle it on and off for the dark section. A button like that would only appear in sections where it's actually applicable. You cant turn it on in other sections.

I'd like to have a thing present in most screens, like a button labeled "scan" that makes clickable zones on the object flash for a moment, so I'll have to figure out how to do that.

The trouble is that with some things, the nature of what I'm working with can make it a tad annoying. Like, the flashlight concept. An example is these screens:

There is no way to do like, a beam of light from a particular spot here. There's an omni-present ambient light that can be oriented, and that is there in like 99% of mandelbulb images/videos. But that doesnt make an effect like this appear.

For both of the two sections in the flowchart that have the flashlight function, I need to manually create the effect with invisible floaty light things jammed into the right places. In that second image there, there are 5 of them, each placed a bit back from the previous to create what at least sorta looks like a directed light. The other flashlight screen (where the camera is further away from that tunnel entrance) only needed 2 lights. Dealing with lighting and material with fractals is it's own big complex topic that took me quite awhile to learn, so it's not easy to do these right.

I also want the user to maybe be able to trigger other stuff and find secrets and such. Like, in this screen, if the user turns the flashlight on and off a few times in a row, they discover the "glitch object", which is this freaky thing:

Maybe that pops onto the screen with some creepy humming or pounding noise while it's there. User clicks on it (or if it's just on screen for a few seconds) and they're dropped back to the starting view of the cube, but another option is now present, which is "break", accessible only from that screen. Hit break and the initial cube changes:

It's the exact same object, but I turned on the Julia mode in the editor. The Julia function does different things to each fractal... only way to know what's gonna happen is to try it, and it depends on WHERE it's started from too... and in this case it causes this cracking effect. Messing with the Julia controls from there can cause shifts and other things to happen from that base.

From there the user can explore the now-cracked fractal and find other stuff. I'm not sure what yet. I figured that buried in THERE somewhere might be another thing to find, that takes you back to the starting cube again, but with another button, probably called "decay", and that makes this happen:

Just as a video that shows up briefly.

I thought of maybe then having the option for the player to click the remnants that are there at the end of the video, but when I tried that in the editor, they arent REALLY there. Sort of. No matter how close you get to them, they are always far away, which doesnt make a whole lot of sense, but fractals are like that. That idea isnt going to work, so it's just an effect that might be cool to see, and then back to the cube.


Thats the idea for that specific object. What I want to do is have each fractal construct have its own exploration section with its own unique things to find and stuff to see. This initial cube is simple enough to work with that I think it'll be a good starting point as I get a handle on how to do the actual site stuff.

 

[Misery]

Those look mesmerizing. I could stare at animations like that for hours. I can't wait to see your site!

I have some other animations as well.

The first one is the most interesting, because I dont understand how in the world I got it to do that. That video and the second one are from like 4 years ago, and I've lost the files since then.

The third and fourth videos are entirely different types of fractals, called flame fractals (no, I dont know why) and are made in a very different program.

All of these are just simple tests. It's possible to go waaaayyyyyyy further with fractal animation. But the further you go, the slower it gets. I've heard of animation projects that can take like a full week of constant running to render. I'd rather not go that far yet.


There's also this here:

That's not really an animation, it's a test of bringing a fractal mesh into a whole other program called Tooll3 and messing with it while using OBS to record. That though is a huge pain... turning a mandelbulb fractal into a mesh is not exactly an exact science and is so far the most confusing (and irritating) thing I can do with these.

From there though it can be used to make all sorts of video effects.

 

[Nervous Rex]

When fractint first came out, I used to spend hours and hours generating images and staring at them.

I also got to attend a guest lecture by Dr. Mandelbrot. That was fun.