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Hello,

I was wondering if the program could incorporate a function to save the fractal as an actual 3d file like .obj or .dwg.
But i suppose this is very hard to do?

greetings!  O0

Please, please :flowers:

Can't work.

No mesh to work with, and the only way suggested so far never worked for me  (series of 2D slices to make an stl file, then convert).

ok, i've heard that several times. Terry W. Gintz implemented a wavefront .obj export almost 10 years ago (or longer) for quaternions. I tried, and it worked really well.
As a non-programmer, I'd like to know if there are differences in principal for bulbs'n'boxes. Is it impossible or not solved yet?

greets
taurus

No it's not impossible for Mandelbulbs - or in fact *anything* that can be rendered as a series of 2D cutplanes, it's just that doing the conversion to a mesh is one of the more difficult algorithms to perfect with respect to producing visually accurate results that aren't astronomically huge in terms of polygon count.

As you say Terry's software does work well, and the latest Quasz features Mandelbulbs:

http://www.mysticfractal.com/QuaSZ.html (http://www.mysticfractal.com/QuaSZ.html)

With respect to producing solid 3D hardcopy of 3D fractals when chatting to these guys at the Gadget Show exhibition:

http://www.bitsfrombytes.com/ (http://www.bitsfrombytes.com/)

I mentioned my confusion as to why 3D printers require meshes when they actually print effectively in 2D slices so why isn't source data best provided in 2D slice format. They obviously hadn't been asked that before and eventually said that I was correct *but* the 2D slice format actually used by the devices is a list of instructions rather than a set of coordinates (I guess like TURTLE) so conversion from the raw slice data to this is required and the vast majority of objects printed originate from polygon meshes to start with so they only have ready-made conversion code from this to the printer's format.
However I asked if I could be given the required instruction format and write conversion software myself and they said yes - *but* not all 3D printers use the same format.

When I have the time to do so I will be contacting these guys (who I also saw at the show):

http://www.objet.com/ (http://www.objet.com/)

Quite obviously buying a printer is out of the question but the guy said get in touch and he'd supply me with details of owners of their printers in our area so I could see if they would be prepared to "print" objects for us (for a fee obviously).

Note that for a hobbyist the bitsfrombytes devices are just about affordable - less than £800 in kit form *but* the resolution is low at 0.4mm whereas the Objet Connex has mich finer resolution plus better quality materials including a choice of 12 materials in a single print (10 greys from white to black plus transparent (perspexish) and translucent pale amber) but the device at the Gadget Show was a cool £170000 !

I tinker with an app called Incendia that allows mesh export of 3D fractals. Nothing quite as spectacular as a mandelbul/box, but there are lots of fun formulas to explore. It's free, or you can donate for higher resolution output.  http://www.incendia.net/