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From a distant and unknown part of a certain universe exists an asteroid. Except it's not just any asteroid, but a giant carbon copy of the Mandelbulb set, carved by (even larger) mechanical robots down to an incredibly fine level (apx. 1 trillion voxels cubed).

Unfortunately, upon this asteroid resides a lonely soul, cruelly banished to the place for 800,000 years over some ridiculously minor misendeavour. However, she has made the most of her stay, building some kind of home (a giant tree house would probably be a better description), and has even managed to generate electricity from raw materials found in the crust of the Mandelbulb, along with her knowledge of science.

At 'Christmas', it looks like this from the outside:

(http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/new/xmas-night.jpg)



In this world, a dark 'night' like this only appears thrice every 600 'days', and along with it comes a hope of salvation. All other times provide at least moderate daylight by our Earth standards.
Zooming out, we see this below. A thousand potential homes - much alike, but all empty; a sorrowful scene indeed, and not unlike the Earth's place in our own universe. Indeed, our lonely inhabitant occupies around only eighty billionths of the entire space (volume) of the Mandelbulb asteroid, so it must seem like the universe to her (click here (http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/new/xmas-night-far.jpg) to enlarge):

(http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/new/xmas-night-far-s.jpg)



But in the daytime, things look a little more optimistic. Below, every part of the Mandelbulb is covered in a blanket of snow, due to the decrease in temperature compared to night (where the snow melts entirely).

(http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/new/xmas-day.jpg)
(http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/new/xmas-day-far.jpg)

Exploration of the Mandelbulb is of interest to our lone wanderer, not least because a certain unknown location holds a secret portal out of this somewhat pitiful existence. It has been said to appear as a faintly glowing pyramid shaped object, perhaps up to two metres in height and two metres across. Why was it even put there?! Is it supposed to be some kind of twisted game by her captors? Or is it maybe to prevent the 'punished' from losing all hope, and going insane? Who knows, but one thing is for sure - finding it is daunting, not only due to the sheer size of the Mandelbulb, but also because of the difficulty in navigation by foot. Whether it's getting trapped by falling into a ravine, slipping off a cliff face, avoiding deadly Mandel Nightshade, or overcoming upside-down surfaces, there can't be a more foreboding terrain.

But therein lies the hope. Maybe this Christmas night, she'll see the glow of the pyramid. Maybe this one. Alternatively, there's only another 799,923 years left to wait.....






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Hope you all like the pics, and a happy new year to all :D

Awesone pics - Happy New Year :)

Wonderfull !!!!

Thanks both! I can't stress how time consuming it was to place those lights (changing 3D numbers, and brightness, and then waiting between 1 and 10 minutes between preview renders isn't fun). A GUI and faster rendering speed would help in this respect no doubt.

Any resemblance of the story to films such as Wizard of Oz, Sliders, or Groundhog day is purely coincidental of course :D

Btw, as nice as these look, global illumination (GI) would probably blow them out the water. I was less optimistic about the improvement using GI after my 'skylighting' did such a good job before with the old pics, but this one is practically begging for GI because of the local light sources, especially in the night scene.

For those with lower resolutions, don't forget to zoom out, or move the horizontal slider across to see more of the pics.

lol, great story, i think those mandelbulbs inspire many people to something, most people on the pages posted where saying that they dreamed of it, or even had dreamed of it before :D

so, beautiful images, i was wondering how you were placing the lights, because of the depth occlusion, respects for doing this pitiful work :D

keep on!

Beautiful, whimsical, and imaginative. I especially like the night pictures.

Awesome!

You realise of course that now I'll have to add visible lights to my UF formula :D

....and fogging ;)

I'll be here to test :)

It's strange - I haven't had *one* dream yet about the Mandelbulb. Then again, I rarely remember my dreams these days :/


Yeah in the end, I wrote a routine to grab the x,y,z coords for any point just by clicking on the image. Even then though it was really hard to get the z coord right and the brightness.


Haha, sure go ahead! My fog routine only has around 5 patents, and the local light one around 17, so I'm sure you can step around them easily enough ;D

Seriously, the fog one was super easy to implement of course - just use the z coord to grey any point proportionally (or technically, is it the xyz distance from the camera?).

Thanks all for the comments! =)

The fog has descended, the lights will appear shortly....

(http://www.fractalforums.com/gallery/1/141_03_01_10_2_02_27.jpg)