Crystal Samurai

[M Benesi]

 z^2 Type D2 image.  Different lighting applied to each, sorry about the lack of anti aliasing.. and z-resolution.  Time. time time.

  Shrunk (maintained ratio I believe) for a little free anti aliasing:

[jehovajah]

Stalactites dropping down from the top of the cave! Nice details.

[visual.bermarte]

Hi Mr.Benesi,
really nice job you are doing!
I hope to see a gpu version of your formulas one day!!
Chaospro is nice but really slow..I'm doing a 800x600 anim. exploring one of your formulas but I need weeks just to obtain one minute of animation.
..
This anim. I'm doing is not using a mix of colors.
For Coloring Methods..
what do you suggest?
Thanks

[Jesse]

Looks very interesting, what i am wondering:
would it gave a better contrast and so a better depth visualization, if the light would shine more from the side?

[M Benesi]

  Thanks jehovajah.  Need to do better with the AA, and perhaps alter coloring a bit more.  Found a darker set of colors for the next image I am working on, but not doing any AA, as the render job will take 15 hours opposed to 2.5 hours.


  visual- thanks for exploring the formulas,

  GPU version of the formulas is waiting for another implementer or my next computer.  I'm not too sure of what kind of benefit (maybe 4x speed - memory transfer times) I could coax out of my 8600m GT (DDR2 type), not to mention I don't know if it has double floats, which are probably essential for any decent zooms into these formulas.  Also, I'm not sure what freeware compiler I should use.

  Coloring mixes?  I'm just learning about them myself.  First of all, ChaosPro's help files are pretty informative, so if you haven't checked them out: open up help, scroll down to "Fractal Parameter Windows" and expand that menu, expand "Quaternion Parameters" and select "Coloring Tab", then read up a bit.  I should probably look it over some more myself.  

  I've been picking the "Orbital Coloring" formula from the color formula list for quaternions and unchecking "orbital coloring".  To get more changes for extreme zooms, you need to select high speed (50) and set mapping to "cube".  I mess with the offsets to find a distribution of colors that I like, and I also just started using the palette editor last night.  I selected a preset palette that made my fractal look cool, then altered it with the palette editor to create the color scheme I wanted.

  Of course, with extreme zooms, you start getting to the point where even "cube" mapping isn't enough to provide a good range of colors, so I am going to write an updated "orbital coloring" formula with scalable mapping of some sort (so that even at extreme zooms, we get a nice variety of colors).  

  The mandala formula, although it isn't truly fractal, makes some very neat animations if you select "bail control mode", set one of the bails to -1 and set the other one to +2 (or some other positive/negative combination).  I varied the rotations/ magnitudes of a mandala mode object in these low resolution animations:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/T_Ws7f5kPkc&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/T_Ws7f5kPkc&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1</a>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/7QH0cQIvK4I&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/7QH0cQIvK4I&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1</a>

  You don't even have to do high iterations or high resolution with mandala images, which makes it nice for rendering quick low resolution animations.  

  I've already implemented a higher dimensional (5, not 3) version of some of the formulas, but that is just SLOOOOWWWWWWWWW, so will have to wait for my next computer (which will have a decent GPU) before I make animations from it.

[M Benesi]

  Thanks Jesse,

  I tried lighting from the side a bit, and it created an imbalanced image.  Thinking back, I probably could go ahead and use more than one light source, and alter the palette (now that I figured that out).  Or... I could post the links to the images so you can look at them in my picassa web album... you need to click the magnifier button in the top right corner of the image display area.

http://picasaweb.google.com/103496528720991269557/2ndOrderTypeD2#5447539349500115154 

  Just click right or left for the other images.  Zoom out to get the details (although the images are not anti aliased... not rendered at enough resolution).

  On this next fractal I will hopefully remember to try using multiple light sources after it's done calculating (although I like its "darkness", which plays into the selection of its name "The Gates of Hades I: The Mouth of Charon"):

[Jesse]

  I tried lighting from the side a bit, and it created an imbalanced image.  Thinking back, I probably could go ahead and use more than one light source, and alter the palette (now that I figured that out).

Yes, using more than one light could improve it more, when you think it would be unbalanced.

I dont know what program you are using or what possibilities you have, for explaining what i meant i have attached an image with only diffuse lighting based on the normals with one light source. Left bulb got the light source straight from the front, and the second one with an angle to the upper right side. I would prefer the right one, but that is only my preference, of course.

[M Benesi]

 I see what you mean.  I definitely prefer the right side bulb as well.  Martin Pfingstl, the creator of ChaosPro, is working on a new release with ambient occlusion lighting which should bring out the details of 3d fractals more.  I'm still using the current version 4.0.195 until he releases his new one.  I tried another fractal, ended up using 3 light sources with shadow mapping enabled which will be placed in another thread.  I'll post several versions of the newer fractal, and eventually get around to re-rendering this one with better color in addition to better lighting (more details can be seen if you go to my picasa album, enlarge the fractal, but it isn't that pretty: I really need to re-render this one). 


  Off to make the new fractal thread.  I like this next one a lot.