"Real" 3D Mandelbrot attempt

[Pauldelbrot]

Reminds a little bit of Half-Life's Xen.

[twinbee]

Wow, this is probably my fave one so far of the 3d brots. Congrats! The composition and lighting is superb (nice one for using two different colored light sources).

How long did it take to render? Did you use global illumination, and do you think a higher iteration would provide even more detail?

[Buddhi]

Hi

The composition and lighting is superb (nice one for using two different colored light sources).

I use only one light source and colours are from simple reflections (environment mapping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflection_mapping).

How long did it take to render?

It took about 25 hours. 20 hours for rendering slices. I used 3D anti-aliasing (2xoversampling - 8 times more voxels to calculate) for achieve smother surfaces and trigonometric calculations are slow. 5 hours for 3D rendering with shading, lighting, reflections, and also anti-aliasing.

Did you use global illumination?

No, I didn't use global illumination. This algorithm should be to slow to render 3D fractals with transparent fog.

...and do you think a higher iteration would provide even more detail?

I used 256 iterations. Unfortunately algorithm for calculating normal vectors causes smoothing details.

[seconteen]

Heh, i never tried to imagine the Mandelbrot in 3D form like this. This is pretty amazing.. 

[jehovajah]

Are you doing any more unit vector renders dave? I know the theory seems to be pulling away from a unit vector approach but i still think it will produce interesting results.

[David Makin]

Are you doing any more unit vector renders dave? I know the theory seems to be pulling away from a unit vector approach but i still think it will produce interesting results.

Yes, but trying new formulae is on hold at the moment, I'm currently optimising the formulas for Mandelbulb and Juliabulb and tidying up my wip3D formula generally - it started life as a 3D IFS formula and there's still junk left over from that use such as an option for colouring based on genetics which is obviously not applicable for normal escape-time fractals.

[kram1032]

based on genetics?

[David Makin]

based on genetics?

As I said, it was for IFS and for IFS (using the deterministic method either convergent or divergent) you have a tree of transforms and the branches taken down the tree to reach a given point gives you a "genetic" code which my 3D IFS formula allowed you to use for colouring purposes.

[kram1032]

ah, ok, IC