My 1st Mandelbulb 3D animation - music clip (6mn50)

[zongo]

Musicians with guns - Cometa (Mandelbox Version)



Hello fractal folks !

This is my first 3d fractal animation so be kind with me

It is made of 18 different 'test' animations with short fades in between. Formulas are very basic, you'll see what I mean^^ Some sequences are only 2 to 4 seconds shots, the longest one being 1 minute long. There's also some DoF experimentation here and there to add some "drama".

I used Mandelbulb 3D ; at the time of the render it used to be version 1.65. I which I wasn't that lazy so I could re-render all the clips with the new ambient shading option in version 1.66, I find this new option to be a lot better for animations.

The compression on Vimeo seems to be fine in 720p but there is a lot of aliasing from time to time. My computer is a modest dual core from 2007 and on top of that I was too impatient to finish this first clip... Also I cheated and boosted the whole clip using Vreveal. Next video will be cleaner I hope.

The music is my drone/ambient project called Musicians With Guns. This is a side project, no solid release yet. The track Cometa will be out next year on a drone/ambient dub CD album on Entropy Records label. The clip version is a shorter and simpler mix than the album one. It hasn't been professionally mastered yet, this is just a tease

It's now time for the video itself. I hope you will enjoy the trip :

<a href="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=17278544&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;fullscreen=1&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=01AAEA" target="_blank">http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=17278544&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;fullscreen=1&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=01AAEA</a>

For this week only : Vimeo allows download of the source video (just before the encoding) for seven days. No watermark for visual comfort

[fastrail]

no need to be "kind". this is truly awesome! audio and video fit perfectly and create some great experience!

[gussetCrimp]

This is absolutely stunning! I am completely transported. It has an incredible mood. Congratulations Ricardo and congratulations Jesse.

[cKleinhuis]

wow, crazy trip, i like the castle like structures, and the tree or bridge like impressions are also amazing!

[gussetCrimp]

Why do some of the circular holes in the smooth curved surface shimmer in and out of existence--around 4'45", for example?

[zongo]

Thank you very much for taking time to watch this "pinkworld" clip and also for the super feedback !

About the holes in two of the last sequences, my fault only... I used a DE stop of 0.8 and for those sequences I guess it should have been a lot lower, at least 0.5. I should have rendered those again but as I said I'm kind of a lazy guy hehe... The result isn't very smooth and there's a lot of aliasing on those holes, that's true, but I thought the effect was quite fun to watch.

I'm working on a new video and this time I'm trying to take care of all those rendering flaws. Again a very basic hybrid formula, this time based on menger. Still nothing spectacular in term of shapes but a smoother video (at last)

[reallybigname]

This was a really great trip through fractal world! 

I used a DE stop of 0.8 and for those sequences I guess it should have been a lot lower, at least 0.5. I should have rendered those again but as I said I'm kind of a lazy guy hehe...

There is always that fine balance between DE stop/Raystep Multiplier and rendering time.  Also, a higher DE Stop can give you a more smooth, less aliased look.

[zongo]

you're so right ! I kind of empirically learned that yesterday while rendering my new animation - DE stop to 0.5 and raystep multiplier to 0.5 too. The formula is a rotated box and with high rotation settings (hmmm actually not that high, like 15 or so) the image gets a bit grainy here and there.

I am not patient enough to render larger images for anti-aliasing purpose but I was able to attenuate this grainy look using DoF at the loss of distant details (the grain seems to reside more in the distant field where details are reduced to single pixels). It looks pretty Ok though. I think with a tiny bit of motion blur on top it will be quite smooth.

[reallybigname]

Yeah, I don't render things at 2x at all.  I use DOF and post processing to get rid of my noise!  (Photoshop > Filters > Noise > Reduce Noise)

And yep, 0.5 and 0.5 are my fall-back values too.