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... =)

Fractal World: 35th Century Earth

These images I happily found quite by accident, in the initial stages of my exploration into other realms. In this one, I am almost sure I found a future Earth. I do not know whether this future is absolutely certain, or whether I'm only glimpsing at a possibility... Either way, it's fascinating, and I can't wait to explore it more.

35th Century Earth

The year is 3553 ... Earth still spins, orbiting the same old sun. Its atmosphere is no longer breathable, having been irreparably damaged in the 31st century.

The last surface trees died out over two centuries ago and exist now only as the highly prized objects of a hobby only the Elite are able to practise.

The green you see is a bio-synthetic, methane-to-oxygen converting plant grown by EarthCore, the global government organisation. They are the self-appointed caretakers of what is left of the rock in space human beings call home. 

The dark blue you see are water ducts, reaching the surface in order to keep the constantly flowing water cool. 

Energy has never been more abundant since we tapped into the earth's deepest geothermal depths.

The windows exist only because the vast intercity network developed early in the 24th century, covering the earth's entire landmass in just under a 2 centuries. From there, we had only one way to go: down. Before, the richest of the rich claimed surface level residences for the amazing "skyviews" caused by an already changing (though still breathable) atmosphere. Huge hivehomes were built in allocated areas below ground for the poor masses.

Now though, those same masses exist only at the surface, when the atmosphere became poison, the air icy cold, the sky a constant, ominous red-black. The rich dug down, and continue to build lavish underground oasis's while the rest squabble over places to live that have as little atmosphere leaking into them as possible.

Lower Class Residential

A block of lower-class residential homes, a view from an opposite block. This picture taken by an EarthCore Archiver, whose purpose it is to collect information and data for the History Vaults.

Each one of those seemingly singular viewports in fact contains at least 20 homes.

Rural Lands

Nestled deep in a valley, and reminiscent of the ancient 21st century Chinese rice farms, this is a view of one of the once renowned factory farmlands, now, of course, completely abandoned since the Taint (when humans poisoned their atmosphere irreparably in the 31st century). 

The green you see is a bio-synthetic, methane-to-oxygen converting plant grown by EarthCore, the global government organisation. They are the self-appointed caretakers of what is left of the rock in space human beings call home. 

Do not be fooled by the blue tint of what was once verdant, kilometres wide, farmland. It is not water, but cold steel.

But is it art?

The question of whether fractal art is real art has sometimes, sort-of, come up in my mind, but always was disregarded for "Of course it is!", and then I got back to exploring. But really... It seems to be a bigger issue, worthy perhaps of more than one blogpost. So from now on I'll be looking out for interesting articles/comments about this all over the place, and will post about it here. After a few posts, I'll create a page to add to menu above, as it is a subject worth featuring.

To start with, here is a piece by Mandelwerk called "Mona Lisa Orbittrapped" (See high resolution on Deviant Art)... He adds a comment beneath it in his dA account:

Mona Lisa Orbittrapped by Mandelwerk

The Louvre, the golden year of 2067.

& my 5 cents about finding a masterpiece in a fractal.

Opposite to some critics on the net I have a strong belief that someone some day will find a masterpiece, "Mona Lisa Class", in a fractal.

Fractal World: Organic

Here I discovered something extraordinary... Though only showing these three images, I've seen so much more... Entire planets that seem to be alive. Pliable, almost fleshy rock. Gigantic structures that seem to be breathing. Alien life, but extremely difficult to recognise as such. A lot more observation is needed.

Mitosis

Exodus 17:6

Osmosis

Fractal World: Fuzzy

These first three images mesmerised me when I first encountered them. Upon applying my IDC's PCA (Probable Colour Approximation) function, I gained vision over the initially perplexing world and flew over fields and fields of what you see below. As you can see, the scenery changed quite drastically the further I explored.

Spore

Pollen

Seed

Fractal World: Mechan

The first few 3 images I've managed to capture, of dubious quality, from the Mechan Universe. I have no idea of the nature of the locations, nor have I any idea whether the colours are accurate or not. With time, I expect to gain a deeper understanding of this fascinating world... Perhaps even capture images of a few living entities.

Antechamber

 This is the first image I captured. I called it Antechamber on a whim but of course no one can know what this location's purpose is. Much more exploration is necessary.

Antechamber - Higher Perspective

 This second image is exactly as it's caption implies. I took my IDC (Inter-Dimensional Camera) up and further back, and took another shot. The colours changed somewhat, and oddly enough, the shape of some of the structures changed too. Peculiar...

Sentinels

I tried different co-ordinates here and found these 6 interesting little guys. Actually, the same sort are in the previous two images too. Not sure, but I think they are the first signs of something life-like. Perhaps they're super-intelligent machine-beings, convening on the strange feeling they're all experiencing suddenly, like they're being watched... Or  could be that they're just sentinel drones, in their Standard Watch Positions assigned by the Omnimind.

Fractal Worlds

Hello! I'm back.

As you all may have noticed, I've not been posting things. Actually, probably, none of you noticed that :P ... But that's ok. It's been a combination of personal life problems and a flood of work I had neglected which I had to catch up on. I have been doing bits of Fractal Art here and there though, which you can see at my deviantArt account.

Out of everything I've done, I only REALLY love 2 or 3 of them. The last one, though, Mechaniclysm (above), gave me an idea...:

Interview with DavidMakin!

David Makin is another fractalnaut who frequently haunts the hallways of fractalforums.com ... Here are his answers to my 8 question interview.

Pandora's Box ~ See more at David's dA page

What first got you into Fractals?

In April 1999 I had some free time and was just browsing the web and came across Fractint.
I had heard of fractals and vaguely recalled some psychedelic imagery being associated with the term but I had no idea what they were.
After using Fractint for around an hour or so I was well and truly hooked on both the Art and Math of Fractals - as with many programmers/mathematicians I was staggered by the (apparent) simplicity of the maths involved in producing such complicated and beautiful results.
In fact it was the second revelatory moment in my life - the first being when I read through a BASIC manual age 20 (1982) after never having been near a computer in my life before.
Almost immediately after trying Fractint (like many other programmers) I set about writing my own fractal software - the now rather outdated "MMFrac" (Makin' Magic Fractals).

In your opinion, which programs for both 2D and 3D fractals are absolute must-have's for any
aspiring fractalnaut?

Interview with bib!

I posted the Interview with Mandelwerk link on fractalforums.com and asked if anyone else would like to answer the same questions. Here is bib's response :)

Underwater Amazing Object by bib - See more on bib's dA page

What first got you into Fractals?

My father bought me the famous book "The beauty of fractals" shortly after it came out, I was 13.
At the same time my cousin who was an Amiga geek programmed the Mandelbrot set in assembler, it was 
fascinating.

My programming skills were not sufficient, so I started to draw fractals by hand, starting with the Pythagoras tree.
I soon discovered an original method to draw by hand the Levy dragon (at that time I thought I had invented a new fractal!)

In your opinion, which programs for both 2D and 3D fractals are absolute must-have's for any
aspiring fractalnaut?

Interview with Mandelwerk!

Temple of Chaotic Borderlines (Won the Mandelbrot Tribute Contestat dA)

The only reason I started this blog 2 months ago, the only reason that I became so suddenly fascinated with fractals, was because I found the 3D fractal art of Mandelwerk on DeviantArt. After going through almost his entire gallery, I got really into everything, discovered the maths behind 2D fractals, and eventually downloaded Mandelbulb 3D to try some 3D fractal art of my own :) ... (Go to Mandelwerk's Deviant Art Page to see more images like the above)

Then I decided to ask him 8 simple questions, with the intention of blogging them, and he graciously answered them for me:

What first got you into Fractals?

Mandelbulb 3D Tutorial: Colour and Lighting cont.

Next, the Ambient tab:

I've played around with each little slide and button for half an hour and still, can't seem to come up with good explanations for all of them. I blame this on a lack of coffee. But I'll try my best and I'm sure through trying yourself, you'll get the general idea:

The "Amb" colours and slider affect the colour and intensity of the all other colours. They're like coloured lenses through which you're looking at your image, and the slide adjusts their brightness. Sliding all the way to the left essentially turns them off.

The Depth colours and slider affects the ambient background colours. The background gradients from your one chosen colour into the other.

Then you have the fog slide :) Adds spookiness to your image :) ... I remember using it in my very first 3D fractal art, back when I had no idea what I was doing. Simply adds luminescent fog of the colour of your choice around your fractal.

The fog offset decreases or increases general fogginess to the picture.
Far offset does a similar thing but starts from far back behind the fractal.

The Ambient Shadow bar is a strange one... From my observations using my forest image below, its was like I was turning a light deep within the fractal on and off, making the fractal glow or go completely dead. Again, I'm probably not quite understanding this properly yet and will add more info here once I've had more experience.

My apologies for such vague descriptions but I am truly a beginner myself. Just play around with them like I've been doing and you'll understand what they do intuitively. Here's my image after some tinkering. (Note that though I didn't (and still don't) really understand how most of the Ambient settings work, I still created this from a pre-conceived idea in my head. My forest, but foggy in the night time):

Mandelbulb Dark Forest

The True Cave of Lost Secrets, and A Dream of Death

I asked some of the guys at Fractal forums what they thought of why my Cave of Secrets image from the previous post looked so different from the original one on Daniel White's site, and Jesse, the creator of Mandelbulb 3D himself, gave me the answer: I was using the default Mandelbulb that loads when you open the program, but the original Cave of Secrets was rendered with a slightly different variation of the formula, known to me simply as the "CosinePow8" (found under the first "3D" tab in the formulas window.)

So I rendered it up, found the Cave, and tried to make it look exactly like the original. I'm zoomed a bit closer, the colouring is really not right, and somehow the original has more detail, but here is my result:

My version of the Cave of Lost Secrets by Daniel White. Click to enlarge.

The detail is really nothing like the original and I'm wondering -why- ? ... If someone knows of a setting to increase detail, please let me know. I've tried several things to no avail. But won't give up!

Next, my second attempt at 3D fractal art, "A Dream of Death" :

What do you all think? :) I'm very proud. Comments below will be greatly appreciated. I'll get to a "Mandelbulb 3D for beginners" Tutorial soon :) ... But right now, I'm really having fun just playing around.

DeviantArt ID and fractal forums logo.

I woke up early this morning and, after shaking off the last of the unpleasantly weird dream I'd had, suddenly felt inspired. Didn't I still need to create a DeviantID ? Why yes, yes I did. So I got to it. I decided I wanted an image that would truly represent me, not only as an artist, but as a person.

So I got my camera, stood back, and silently said cheese. Then I sat down, opened photoshop and thought "Now what?" ... Well, I knew I was going to have to include something fractal in it, so I opened Fractal eXtreme and loaded good old Mandelbrot. It had to be Mandelbrot.

And to make a long story short, after some tinkering, this is now my deviantID:

So while I was feeling so creative, I decided to make a logo for fractalforums.com ... They allow their members to submit logos for random display every time you click a link.

Gostou? :) ...

Fractal Art: A Start

So I've downloaded 4 different Fractal programs so far. Mandelbulb 3D and 3 different 2D applications: Fractal eXtreme, Xaos, and Ultra Fractal. Xaos I haven't really looked into much yet, played a bit with Ultra Fractal and as you all know, I've become quite familiar with Fractal eXtreme. Plus I tinkered around a little with Mandelbulb 3D :) Honestly, who could help it, after installing it?

Anyway, these are my results after trying to create something I would call "Art" ... Because really, though some extraordinarily beautiful images can be generated simply by zooming and choosing different formula sets, etc, one cannot really call that art. Art happens when you as a human being start consciously pursuing the image with a concept already in mind. (Though happy accidents sometimes happen, as is the case with one of the following pieces. I'll leave you to guess which :) ).

"Neuron of the God Emperor" ... Done in Fractal eXtreme

"Birth of a Blackhole" ... Done in Ultra Fractal

"The Crimson Army Evaded" ... Done with Mandelbulb 3D

So yes... You can't just randomly generate and zoom in to something that looks cool, save it, and call it art. This is not the Way. You might be able to fool some people, but never those of us who know, and most especially, never yourself. You'll soon lose interest, in fact, in doing empty, albethey aesthetically pleasing, pieces.

Personally, I've decided to go with conceptual themes whenever I'm looking to create something. I've come up with these three, that I'll use for now while I'm still in newbie phase:

Space (lol... couldn't have chosen an easier concept right?)

The Inner Mind

Creatures of the Dark vs. Creatures of the Light

...

Or something like that. Happy accidents might cause the birth and further exploration of alternate concepts. Art has no rules except the ones we create for ourselves ;)

Fractal Love

Just a quick post to demonstrate a small piece of creativity using fractals.

Yesterday was Dia dos Namorados (the Brazilian equivalent to Valentine's Day) and since I've become so enthralled with fractals recently, I thought why not try using them to create something special for the love of my life (Marianna)?

So using the Arbitrary Power Mandelbrot set, I found this beautiful design, and had it printed in photo quality for her. Happily, it came out so much better than I thought it would.

 

Then, now, I thought of something that I wish I had thought of on the actual day... Zooms of different spots in the above image, which I posted on Facebook, with the timeless words...:

 

All in all very happy with that :) ... Certainly more meaningful and less cheesy than a store-bought card.