Fractal Matrix - 360° & stereo 3D - Mandelbulb 3D fractalhttp://www.fractalforums.com/index.php?action=gallery;sa=view;id=19098Hello Friends of Order and Chaos,
because of improvement of technology the possibilities for mankind raise and raise. I would call the last year the beginning of Virtual Reality. YouTube starts it's 360° mode - even stereoscopic. facebook also can play 360° content. VR communities grew like mushrooms and a lot of devices are now available ranging from ultracheap cardboard to Oculus Rift.
Jesse was prophetic and included a 360° Panorama camera mode in Mandelbulb 3D. Mandelbulber can also render 360° content. So Julius, Don, some others and myself started creating the first 360° VR videos with Mandelbulb 3D or Mandelbulber. It is just another level of media when you can decide in which direction you are viewing and when the fractal world is all around you.
So my entry for this year had to be a 360° fractal. More by accident I surfed a very old hybrid (Amazing Box, MengerIFS, _AmazingBoxSSE2) from my first animations and found an object that was quite suitable for a 360° animation because there is action all around you. Beside that it was possible to add a cool morphing by modulating MengerIFS CScale Z parameter even when zoomed far inside.
The result is an animation with 5325 frames of 3840x2160 pixel and Antialias 2 (so rendered at double size). Rendering time about 5 minutes/frame or 20 days for complete animation.
Well, 360° is cool. But much cooler would be 360° in stereoscopic 3D! So what happen, when you turn on "360° Panorama" as camera mode and check "Render stereo animation" option in the Animation maker?
First results looks promising. When combining the left and right 360° images via StereoPhotoMaker then red parts were always left to matching the blue parts. Crossed eye view check with right image on left side and left image on right side looks good, at least in the center (later front of the 360° view).
But after discussing the topic at facebook and doing two testvideos Julius Horsthuis gave the hint that you get a stereo image on the back, but it is flipped. So when you wear red-cyan glasses you have to turn them around. At the sides there is no stereo effect, so only front view is correct.
So "Good bye" to fractals in 360° stereoscopic 3D?
I hope not.
Some thought loops about the problem and some raw tests later I had a solution to create at least 360° stereoscopic 3D images. So this proof of concept works and it should be quite easy to implement this feature as a new camera mode.
I have started a new tutorial topic about the processing pipeline here:
http://www.fractalforums.com/tutorials/t23857/Because such a 360° stereoscopic 3D does not exist for now I can't render my animation that way. So I had to split it in a normal 360° version and a slideshow with the 360° stereoscopic 3D images that I have created with the new method. Rendering time for each image was about 2 days, so just 1920p quality.
Just for completeness I also add here the flat / non-injected 4K version of the 360° animation, so you can see the complete fractal at once.
360° Version - embedded player can't play 360° content - view directly at YouTube!!!
https://www.youtube.com/v/mQbSJFMmfA8&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQbSJFMmfA8
360° Stereoscopic 3D Slideshow - the next step into Virtual Reality Fractals - embedded player can't play 360° content - view directly at YouTube!!!
https://www.youtube.com/v/VaXQdOGE0Og&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaXQdOGE0Og
4K UltraHD flat Version - same as 360° version but without 360° metadata
https://www.youtube.com/v/2Ap3IiLJGpI&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ap3IiLJGpI
Parameters here:
http://schizo604.deviantart.com/art/Fractal-Matrix-246-Mandelbulb-3D-fractal-608911207Video also available for viewing and downloading at Vrideo:
http://www.vrideo.com/watch/PE4SI1cSoon also at my WearVR Channel:
https://www.wearvr.com/developers/schizo604/appsEnjoy your flight!