3D Fractals via Mandelbulber

I was scanning recommended videos on Youtube when I came across this one:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhMdL4kSnsg]

 

I had to see this.  It was amazing.  I was hooked.  I had to find more. 

That led me to this program: https://sourceforge.net/projects/mandelbulber/files/Mandelbulber%20v2/win64%20build/

Which I then ran, and tinkered with.  Result:  I rendered two/three desktop backgrounds for myself.

orange fern brushed metal
brushed metal-aliased  

At 2560×1080, the first two took about 15 minutes.  The third one, which looks like the second one, was actually rendered at 5120×2160, and then scaled down to 2560×1080 (simulating an anti-aliasing of 2x).   However, it .. came out different:

image

image

There are more holes, in the one with higher resolution.

This is because

a) Mandelbulber dynamically scales fractal complexity as it raytraces, and

b) the model that I chose, i chose one with “negative scale”, which I think means, the fractal works by taking chunks out of space rather than by adding chunks into space. 

I gave up at this point.  There’s an unlimited investigation that could happen, and my curiosity had been satisfied.  I could make desktop wallpapers of any resolution.. but I’d need to search for something cool to take a picture of.  And there’s so many variables.

I did find another VR flythrough, albeit i have no VR goggles, so someday I want to see this in stereoscopic:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOu3_tmHxu4]

 

Be aware there’s a lot of material editing stuff that you can do as well – which can be a bit hard if you haven’t dealt with materials (specular, texture, etc) before.   Oh, and dynamic volumetric fog – lots of computation even at 320×200.    Like I said, unlimited time could be spent…

Or you can oogle these:

http://www.mandelbulber.com/gallery_page1.php

image

(screenshotted so you can see how beautiful before deciding to click the link).