It started with Fractint

[djbarney]

It was sometime in the 1990's. I'm not sure where I first encountered Fractals, it could have been at a rave, or in a magazine. Then my friend introduced me to Fractint and everything started making sense. My interest in Tao'ism especially the Hexagrams - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor_set ... the dance music I was heavily into and DJ'ing. The Wrath of the Math as Jeru the Damager put it (a hip hop rapper). Now after a long absence (VERY long story ) I find myself reminding myself what I was doing with Fractint and getting into newer software like Mandelbulber 3D and Incendia. Being heavily into video games and 3D engines (latest thing is UE4), and having already made some fractal inspired art ...

http://djbarney.deviantart.com/art/Hilbert-meet-Phi-153628202
http://djbarney.deviantart.com/art/Octahedron-Array-43390067
http://djbarney.deviantart.com/art/Sunset-Tropism-43445221

I am looking at how to export 3D fractal meshes from these fractal applications. Quite involved as, being fractals, the mesh complexity can get out of control and in a realtime 3d engine (the game engine, ue4, etc) we have to "fake" everything to maintain persistence of vision through high frame rate. There are things like normal mapping - http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Normal_map - that can fake the detail but I have not found any fractal software that takes this approach yet; export overall fractal shape as mesh and then somehow compute the details as a normal map, I'm sure there are other ways as well.

[Kalter Rauch]

Hi djbarney...

I remember you from THM.
You might be interested in my fractal work there.

Hello fellow researchers...

I've been into fractals ever since a Sci. Amer. article about the Mandelbrot set in 1986.
At the time I had a C-64,
but I had a COMAL cartridge so I was able to easily use structured programming
to rig up algorithms to explore some different fractal types...
eg. Mandelbrot and Julia sets, tree fractals with turtle graphic, random aggregate diffusion,
and Henon mapping, etc. The last was interesting in that I could use 4 game "paddle" potentiometers
to control parameters as a spray of ~20 pixels rapidly sprayed out/erased so that a range could be tested.
Put into context,
in 1986 I ran a C-64 24/7 for a week(or 2?) calculating the Mandelbrot set
and only filled 1/4 of the screen!!!
Fortunately I later got a machine language version that made it practical...
Now I'm running an i7 through a gtx760 as per rec. from Martin Pfingstl.

I've been lurking here for maybe 3 years...
using ChaosPro for longer,
and recently got into the Mandelbox...WOW!!!

Later......KR