Global illumination here we come!

[KRAFTWERK]

@ Twinbee

I would love to see a combination of a single "heavy spotlight" combined with some of that global illumination.

I think that would result in a less "blurry" (wich I don't think it is) image.

Kind of what you should get from a nice photo-shoot IRL.
(I used to work as a photo assistant many years ago...) 

J

[visual.bermarte]

Hi,  maybe is better to have a mandelbulb inside a complete scene (for example a floor, various props, shiny objects, tiles, etc..) to enjoy the beauty of GI.

[visual.bermarte]

Just a test using .obj file.

[twinbee]

I would love to see a combination of a single "heavy spotlight" combined with some of that global illumination.

I think that would result in a less "blurry" (wich I don't think it is) image.

Yes, I agree - a combination of local and global would be ace. In a way, the sun sort of acts a bit like a local light source since it's so small compared to the rest of the sky. Like Visual says, a scene will add more realism further (reflection mapping from a 'sky image' would be effective). Got to fix my GI alg though first...

[Hamilton]

They give results at least as good as GI and do not suffer the render time impact that is associated with Global Illumination.

It's not related to GI - it's a substitute for it.

HDRI isn't really a substitute for GI, it's another source of illumination (for environment lighting) as you mentioned, unrelated to the rendering algorithm in use. For example Twinbee's earlier renderings used a non-constant sky colour, probably with high dynamic range - he's still using that now it seems, but he's also considering secondary light bounces. My images on his page (also in the first article) rendered with GI as well.

Speaking of HDRI, I just wanted to show you a mandelbulb rendering result I get with my GI renderer using the technique of high dynamic range image based lighting.

http://www.fractalforums.com/index.php?action=gallery;sa=view;id=2383

[pfrancke]

I see some beautiful rendering here.  I do not wish to be too much off topic, but here goes.  I use Terragen 2 to render and Carrara.  I recently read about Mandelbulbs and I was hoping to find a program that could output obj files and import them into my favorite rendering programs. 

However, I think that I've been thinking about it all backwards.  A super detailed fractal would be impossibly large.  And of course the closer you zoom, the more coarse such an object would be.  To place objects and fractals into the same world, the proper solution would be to have the rendering program capable of generating the fractal.

I think you or someone like yourself should contact the Terragen programming team or the Carrara one and offer to add that functionality.  The Terragen rendering is awesome by the way.  I'm sure a terrain and atmosphere rendering program would love to have integrated fractal generation abilities.

And then end users like me would be able to render fractals and integrate objects and textures and control lighting, etc, etc, etc.

[Sockratease]

I see some beautiful rendering here.  I do not wish to be too much off topic, but here goes.  I use Terragen 2 to render and Carrara.  I recently read about Mandelbulbs and I was hoping to find a program that could output obj files and import them into my favorite rendering programs. 

However, I think that I've been thinking about it all backwards.  A super detailed fractal would be impossibly large.  And of course the closer you zoom, the more coarse such an object would be.  To place objects and fractals into the same world, the proper solution would be to have the rendering program capable of generating the fractal.

I think you or someone like yourself should contact the Terragen programming team or the Carrara one and offer to add that functionality.  The Terragen rendering is awesome by the way.  I'm sure a terrain and atmosphere rendering program would love to have integrated fractal generation abilities.

And then end users like me would be able to render fractals and integrate objects and textures and control lighting, etc, etc, etc.

Hi.

I'm a big Carrara Fan  (you may know me from the Daz3D Forums!).

It seems that there won't likely be such a collaboration because these fractals are ray-traced things using Distance Estimates and not true 3D Objects at all.  There is a way to generate stl files from a group of slices of a fractal, but I never had any luck trying it.  In theory, the stl files could then be converted to obj or 3ds or whatever.

I find the best way to combine these fractals with my 3D Scenes is in postwork. 


http://s106.photobucket.com/albums/m278/sockratease/?action=view&current=z.mp4

Sorry, never upped that one to yootoobe or vimeo, so there it is on photobucket.  You just have to click the image or link to see the video!

[David Makin]

AFAIK  there are two main programs that output 3D+ Mandelbulb fractals as obj/stl files - these are Xenodream (latest version, Julias only) http://www.xenodream.com/ and the latest version of QuaSZ by Terry Gintz http://www.mysticfractal.com/QuaSZ64.html .
I don't think either do Mandelbox or mixed types yet but I could be wrong.

As has been stated to get decent detail does create *very* large stl/obj files but if you have a 64-bit system this shouldn't really be a problem - folks have been exporting quaternions and similar to Bryce/3D Studio etc. using QuaSZ for many years even on 32-bit systems.

[pfrancke]

Hi Sockratease and David,

Sockratease, I always read your posts at Daz3D with interest!

I agree about postwork integration - or taking a fractal image and placing it on a plane within the render program, but the collaboration I hope for is not for object production (since good objects are so large), it is for integration and generation of mandelbulb fractals into existing rendering programs (like Carrara or Terragen).  They ray-trace, they texture, etc. 

[kek]

Is it possible to save the mandelbulb as a obj? That would me so cool, always wanted to play around with 3d fractals in maya!

[Sockratease]

Sockratease, I always read your posts at Daz3D with interest!

Yeah, I post a lot of 3D Cows at the Daz forums, and fractallized photos Lissa here!

I agree about postwork integration - or taking a fractal image and placing it on a plane within the render program, but the collaboration I hope for is not for object production (since good objects are so large), it is for integration and generation of mandelbulb fractals into existing rendering programs (like Carrara or Terragen).  They ray-trace, they texture, etc.  

But texturing is handled via UV Mapping a 3D Object, or for procedural textures - following the geometry.  Neither is possible with an object lacking mesh  (that's why volumetric clouds and fire and such (in software like Carrara and Bryce) can only have color gradients and not image textures)  (just like Mandelbulbs!).

The closest we came was in an early version of Mandelbulb 3D which had a feature called "Bitmap Lighting" - which used an image projected as a light source.  Just as I got the feature under control, and learned how to focus the image, it went away  




http://www.fractalforums.com/index.php?action=gallery;sa=view;id=2010

I'd love for that feature to come back, but Jesse said it was impractical for some reason I forget...

Is it possible to save the mandelbulb as a obj? That would me so cool, always wanted to play around with 3d fractals in maya!

It is possible, but only in limited ways thus far as the obj files tend to be half a gigabyte for decent detail.  See the software mentioned above by David.

[pfrancke]

about the texturing...  I see what you mean.  The color then must come from a lighting strategy (as you mentioned) or be procedurally integrated with the formula that generates the fractal itself.  I don't know if it could know slope for instance, but it might know distance or location or what iteration of a formula it came from.  Any way though, I hear what you are saying...