3D Fractal Art (Mine and in general)

So I thought I should finally share some of my favourite pieces that I've done so far, and also talk a bit about how I go about the creation process.

The first issue on my mind is something that came up in an e-mail with a new friend of mind, Jing-reed, who has recently left a few very kind comments at the bottom of my Mandelbulb 3D tutorial pages. I told him that I've had a rule, since I started: Never load other people's parameters to work off of. I tried this a few times way back, but producing anything in this way always made me feel a bit empty... Like the piece wasn't really, truly mine. And this still holds true... But, my friend mentioned that he has used Ultra-Fractals for some time and had always used other people's parameters as a way to learn techniques, which he could then use later in original works of his own... Why I never thought of doing this is beyond me...

Ok, now, on to some of my artwork...

The first piece I was really proud of, and still today is my favourite, would be "Fury" :

Fury

I remember I came upon it by accident, when I first learnt how to use the cutting tool. It's simply the Mandelbox formula, cut along it's z-axis. I tweaked the parameters very slightly, zoomed into the edge of one of the Mandelbrot shapes, and found something that looked cool. A few colour changes, and a bit of mist, and voila, I achieved the above. It's got an organic feel to it that I really like. Much of the other stuff I've done is much more mechanical.

One such example, although it's got a touch of organic-ness in it too, is Mechaniclysm:

Mechaniclysm

Without loading the m3i in Mandelbulb 3D, what I can tell you from memory is that it's a Julia, of some formula combined with one of the Menger formulae. I remember zooming in a LOT, until I found that spot... And I only noticed the doubled M's after I'd uploaded it to my Deviant Art account =)

Then, my most recent two pieces, I am especially proud of =) ... :

"Dawn at the Polynite Mines of Mistle"

Dawn at the Polynite Mines of Mistle

This one was, as the name so cryptically suggests, a combination of the Msltoe_Sym formula and the _Polyfolding add-on. I really want to explore this combination more... It's really beautiful, and has a lot of landscape-creating potential. With some colour next time, I plan on creating something beautifully fantasy-inspired. The only problem is that the Msltoe_sym formula takes forever to render. The above took a day and a half o.O ...

and "Primary Seat of the Angry Child Buddha" ...

Primary Seat of the Angry Child Buddha

This was done with only the MengerIFS formula, after I friendly-challenged Mandelwerk to create something beautiful using it only, hehe. (The question being discussed at the time was how I believed it was a challenge to find not-so-fractally-looking images in order to create really beautiful fractal artwork. Mandelwerk correctly pointed out that many of his very good artworks are at the same time obviously very fractally). (See the two examples he gave:  Pupal Metamorphosis of Queen Cleopatra and Mathematicians framed by their own formulas).

The seated buddha in the center quite luckily and extraordinarily appeared when I clicked there with the first positional light. I then went and used all the available light tabs to add more. (Only positional lighting was used).

As for the creational process... Well, as already illuded to, most of what I've done so far has been with a lot of frustrated perseverance, and luck. Looking for a great fractal form can take forever... And then, suddenly, something will pop up and you can spend hours saving location after location for possible use later. And hours more playing around with the colours of each one. (Also remember, always render your fractal to the size you want it before perfecting the colours. If you do the colours first, they will change dramatically when rendering up.)

Lastly, Jesse has added a wonderful new feature to the program's navigator: A sidebar, which has controls (sliding bars) that alter (to your preferred degree, from very fine changes, to very big changes) the parameters of each of the formulae you are using. I've only used this once so far (The Angry Child Buddha pic) and can't wait to use it more. I'll feature it in a new Tutorial page soon, along with a few more features I haven't yet explored.

That's it for this post =)

Mandelbulb 3D Tutorial: The 'DE combinate' button

Right! Back again for another tutorial page. I'm much more experienced now with Mandelbulb 3D, and have thought that I should do a revision of much of what I've already posted, but as that's not terribly exciting, and  as I feel like doing something exciting, I'm going to try out the DE Combinate feature of the formula box.

I learnt about this from two of my favourite 3D fractal artists, Mandelwerk and Bib, through the following works of theirs (and more):

Claustrophobia by Infinite Rooms by Mandelwerk

Two Worlds by bib993

So when I saw these amazing images, of course the first thing I wondered was 'How did they do it?' ... And the answer is DE Combinate. As of right now though, I haven't tried using it yet. I like to keep my first time experiments for when I'm in blogging mode, so that you all learn with me as I go.

My intention is first to try and copy Mandelwerk's "Claustrophobia by Infinite Rooms" and Bib's "Two Worlds" and explain how I did it. Then I'll alter one of them, to test out DE Com features...

Let's go!

Alrighty... The first part was easy. Simply select the DE Combinate button in the formula window (default button is 'Alternate' (as seen above)), and then choose "MengerIFS" as your first formula, and "Integer Power" as your second formula. Click on Calculate 3D and this is what you get:

Next step, use the navigator to face the side of the cube:

Now it's just a question of colour, I think =) .. And, the sides are curved, and Mandelwerk's original has very straight lines... Will try figure it out now.

<...>

Ok, so after an annoying amount of time trying to get his exact colouring, I've given up =P ... But I figured out the curved edges. In the main window, there's a tab called 'Camera' ... I tried clicking the 'Rectilinear Lense' and that did the trick =) ... Then it's just a matter of fine tuning in the navigator and voila:

My attempt at duplicating Mandelwerk's version.

Next, Bib's very intimidating 'Two Worlds' as seen above.

Let me load the two formulae mentioned in the comments and see what I get...
...
Uhm... Ok so nevermind that... =P ... I even asked him for some hints, and he gave me the four formulae he used, but no matter how I tweak the parameters, I can't figure out how he did it =P ... I'm thinking some background in advanced maths may be necessary...

So now, on to some experimentation! I'll use my version of Mandelwerk's Claustrophobia. ... First things first, when you choose DE Combinate in the formulae box, at the bottom of the first formula, this appears:

Just to see what happens, I chose the next option 'Ma' and rendered. As Jesse's little description popup-box says ... "only overlapping parts" .. of the two formulae, that is =) ... After repositioning (zoomed out and rotated) and some minor colour changes, this is what it looks like:

Next, I tried the 'Av' option, and got this (Note, it took much longer to render with this option.) :

Here's a close-up, just to see:

The option 'S1' looks like this:

Then I changed the "Ds" value that appears if you choose 'S1' ... It is 0.5 by default. I tried 0.2 and got this:

Then I zoomed into the center there and did a few colour changes to get this:

=)

And with Ds.= -0.5 :

The option S2 you can check out for yourself... Not much different to S1 but remember that with different formulae, or even just with simple parameter tweaks, results can change drastically.

That completes the DE Combinate tutorial ... Next, I'm hoping to cover that post-process tab ;)

If my tutorial is helping you, please consider supporting me over at my Patreon page.
I also have a deviantArt gallery.

Escher

I was recently introduced to the artist Escher. His work is amazing... And why am I posting about it here? Well, have a look for yourself:

Double Planetoid by Escher

Gravity by Escher

Stars by Escher

Metamorphosis II by Escher (Click on below link to view full size)

http://uploads6.wikipaintings.org/images/m-c-escher/metamorphosis-ii.jpg

So there you go =) ... They are sooo very fractal. The first three especially remind me of this work by Mandelwerk, using DE Combinate in Mandelbulb 3D:

"Arachnophobia by icosahedral spider leg caging" by Mandelwerk

For more works by Escher... Uhm, too lazy to go get a link. Just google him ;P ... Not going to promise more frequent posts from now on, but, well, there's hope... =)