Which software creates cleanest 3D meshes?

[Taika-Kim]

OK, so I invested in the Tiko 3D printer and in anycase want to get into the world of 3D fractal printing.

Since the last time I explored these things was with Fractint (yay!), now I need to learn new software.

So what makes the most sense, since I really can't start with all of them at once at least, and also some of them cost money, some even insanely lot.

I am mostly after something that would maybe create maybe NURBs or something similar with perfect surfaces, I assume it should be possible to take some estimates and averages from fractals to create something like this? Or is this still as of now beyond humanity's skills?-) I played a bit with Meshlab, but it's the same than with 2D image editing, I dislike the look of quantized data that's smoothed by an algorithm. Altough surfing a bit at Shapeways I see that some people manage to get good results...

The marching cubes seems to be pretty similar from every software, do all of the software at Mystic Fractals use the same implementation than I can for now do myself for free with Mandelbulber, Fiji and Meshlab? I am prepared to of course pay for software, but I'd prefer to start at least for now with free software.

XenoDream seems nice, today I hope to have some time to give it a test. Since it seems to do procedural generation, I assume it creates very clean results too?

How is the Corona extension for 3DS Max? Can it produce aliasing free meshes? Any other software out there? I see it's free, but 3DSMax is way beyond my budget for now...

Because I very well don't want to use a lot of time to learn a software just to find out that all the time there was something better out there...

[cKleinhuis]

hello and welcome to the forums

i am not really famillar, and every software used right can produce nice results
this seems to be a good starter:
http://www.fractalforums.com/tutorials/voxel-image-stack-and-then-what/

[Sockratease]

Hello and welcome  

Which software creates cleanest 3D meshes?

I find the cleanest meshes with the least work come from Incendia (and it's free!).

With a little work JWildfire, and the Voxel Stack feature from Mandelbulb 3D / FIJI, make very nice meshes too, but can be labor intensive getting something with a manageable file size.

You mentioned Xenodream - a very nice software, but never tried the paid version.  The free version makes nice meshes though, just somewhat limited until unlocking full power with the paid version.

For other options, try ChaosPro, and since you mentioned 3DS Max, any fractal generator that generates a z-buffer can be used in the 3D Software I use (Carra, Bryce, and other cheaper software) as a heightt map for terrains with interesting results.

All lose details and the only way  (OK, best way) to really integrate highly detailed fractals in video is by compositing.

Good luck with it and feel free to ask questions!

[Taika-Kim]

Height maps are not so interesting, except maybe for creating plates for stenciling onto ceramics... Because I really want to bring these forms out to the real world. We invested in the Tiko with some friends, and providing that the company ever delivers, it would be quite cool to start printing my own fractals

Do I understand correctly that as of now the fractal programs can't really "see" true 3D geometry (in so much as it even exists with fractals...), and they are just drawing a pseudo-3d-projection from the current point of view?

Still I believe that there would have to be some way to take averages or whatever to create smooth surfaces from curves to at least proxy fractal shapes... Well, I'll look into Incendia, thanks for the tip! I have been already playing around with Mandelbulb 3D and Meshlab according to that one tutorial, but can't really optimize my shapes down to that 10000 faces that was suggested, without the parts with small detail getting quite blocky

What do you use Jwildfire for, I thought it's just a tool for creating fire fractals?

So I assume that even that Corona thing uses the marching cubes approach, then?

[Sockratease]

Sorry, my programming days are too far behind me to talk meaningfully about how Corona works or what algorithms are used    

What do you use Jwildfire for, I thought it's just a tool for creating fire fractals?

JWildfire now makes very nice meshes from fractal flames, and can also be used to replace FIJI in the MB3D pipeline to obj files 

See here : http://www.fractalforums.com/jwildfire/creating-3d-meshes-from-flame-fractals/

Do I understand correctly that as of now the fractal programs can't really "see" true 3D geometry (in so much as it even exists with fractals...), and they are just drawing a pseudo-3d-projection from the current point of view?

Actually, I think most of our software is actually displaying very dense point clouds and volumetric objects (to use 3D World terms) and not really the sort of geometry used in 3D Software except as native features  (think Volumetric Clouds in Bryce or Carrara's fire object).  That's why the issues with getting good obj files persist, and will persist until an obj of several GB is not an issue to use for all purposes from modeling to printing to dropping on cow's heads!



I just can't resist any excuse to post that picture...

[Taika-Kim]

OK.

I got quite passable smoothing results from Meshlab's laplacian smooth... Because the first 500x500 mesh I created resulted in almost ten million polys, which is quite a lot for my computer at least Also Blender has seriously badly optimised edit mode for objects, so working with large meshes seems to be bit of a problem... Well, I'll see, first I need to learn to use all this software better.

[JohnVV]

meshlab is one

but
i would start with using Blender 2.73

[Natan Sharp]

I'm not expert in 3d fractals generation but with xenodream i have done interesting meshes that works well with 3d studio max.
I'm going to try with Incendia.
Anyway i think that meshes export will be a feature to work on for the next 3d fractals softwares because of the possibilities it gives to 3d artists.