3D Fractals

The Mandelbulb is awesome. So is the Mandelbox. These are the sorts of images which I can look at again and again and still find myself saying "wow".

Someone remind me, why does shit always have to look weirder close up? Is it some sort of natural law?

That's just fucking awesome.

Way neato. Fractals are just awesome.

The Mandelbulb is the coolest thing I've seen in a long time. Holy crap.

Awesome! Everything looks like some kind of super-alien landscape.

The normal Mandelbrot Set rendering is actually a 2D slice of a 4D object. I'm surprised nobody's tried rendering that.

Why does it look like a web of wailing souls?!?!

EDIT: Holy crap, the Mandelbox is beautiful though.

edited 2nd Apr '11 6:37:13 AM by EgregiousEric

^^Wait, what?

Well of course, anything 3D is automatically 4D. The fourth dimension IS time, you know.

Wow, I didn't understand a word of the explanation but those are beautiful. The bulb especially is just wow.

edited 2nd Apr '11 12:22:09 PM by spasticgecko

^^This is mathematics, not physics!

IIRC, the Mandelbrot and Julia sets are defined by the complex values Z and C where the iteration Z(n) = Z(n-1)^2 + C doesn't diverge.

Complex numbers have two dimensions, so a plot relating two complex numbers is 4D. The Mandelbrot set slices it one way, the Julia sets slice it along another way.

Yeah, pretty much. The Mandelbrot Set is just the slice of the Julia set such that Z(0)=(0+0i). Rendering it with, say, Z(0)=i might have an interesting effect. (or it might just rotate the whole image. Anyone want to try the proof? )

edited 2nd Apr '11 12:48:10 PM by Yej

Dude, if I ever shoot a low-budget movie that is a Surreal Horror, I'm setting it in a Mandelbulb. No questions asked.

well...maybe not low budget....

edited 2nd Apr '11 11:34:26 PM by SpainSun

Yeah, it'd be pretty high budget if you had enough money to find the Mandelbulb.

edited 3rd Apr '11 3:20:59 PM by Reecer6

Mandelbox get my nod = I'm partial to angular shapes and stuff. Saw some nice fly-into video snippets, and had to wonder just how much computational power they had to have used to do even ten seconds worth of quality footage.

edited 4th Apr '11 1:58:58 AM by pvtnum11

AWESOME!

Mandelbox looks like a cathedral interior.

Wow. Third picture from last on the Mandelbulb... It's a friggin' NEBULA. EDIT: Dear God, the pictures are messing with my mind. this, my friends, is the true face of Cthulu... I can't handle anymore. Nightmare Fuel.

edited 26th May '11 7:01:20 AM by ProfessorMetallica

This is what happens when shaders go mad.

We actually just learned how to use tessellation shaders to do fractals in 3D space, but obviously nothing like this scale.

That's just beautiful

Woah.

This one isn't as ornate as the Bulb but it's still cool.

Also, Romanesco broccoli. I finally got to try some about a month ago, and it's tastier than regular broccoli. All the recursion makes for an interesting texture, too.

Screw taste! I couldn't bear to eat something like that... To take even the slightest nibble of it would ruin its very form! D: