Vitric Visions is a three-part series of Mandelbulb 3D animations where I experimented with animating transparent fractals.
About the videos:
VV #1 was an initial test, and as such came out kinda bland (at least in my humble opinion). But it was an eye-opening proof of concept that said “hey, this can be done, and relatively quickly too.”
VV #2 added some depth-of-field blurring, giving the fractals a somewhat more realistic presence. I really like this one. The morphing shapes remind me of those heavy glass ashtrays that occupied every room of my childhood.
VV #3 brought it all home by mixing a “standard” escape-time dodecahedron 3D fractal with a dIFS “dodecatubeIFS” fractal. The initial spinning dodecahedron reminds of a Jack-in-the-Box, waiting to pop its weird little head out.
And some technical stuff:For those of you who aren’t aware, rendering transparency can be extremely time consuming (uggh!!). To minimize the overall length of rendering time, I chose to limit transparency to only “dIFS” fractals. So what the heck are “dIFS”? Well, oddly, there’s no official definition of “dIFS” in the Mandelbulb 3D program documentation, nor have I been able to find a solid definition on fractalforums.com. Turning to Google however, I found two possible answers: “Discrete Iterated Function System” and “Deterministic Iterated Function System”. My money is on the latter. Here is an excellent Powerpoint presentation that describes this type of fractal: http://flurry.dg.fmph.uniba.sk/webog/SuboryOG/bohdal/lesson4.ppt Basically, it’s a primitive shape that is repeated over and over again, with some type of consistant modification applied to each instance of the shape. In the context of these animations, dIFS fractals rendered extremely quickly due to the ability to reduce the maximum iterations of each formula to an extreme minimum. Trust me, this saves soooooooo much time!
These three projects were all rendered during roughly the same time period of just over a month, with a final total of 31345 source frames rendered at 1920×1080. The completed videos were then rendered at 60fps.
That’s all folks. Enjoy.
Amazing ! Amazing !
Truman,
I am always amazed at the quality of time and effort that you put into your work. The terminology, nomenclature, systematic and technical terms that you use most often eludes me. But be that as may, I always enjoy seeing your work.
Of the three (3) transparent fractals (vitric videos), my favorite was number #2. Seems as if number # 3 was the most difficult to do, was it ? I also liked the music in # 3 primarily because of the beat.
However, all of them were great ! I still believe that because of your hard work, knowledge, and tenacity towards your projects, one day You are going to hit ” JACK POT”. When it happens, be sure to remember that I told you so, because I am praying for this to happen.
Love,
David
I like this series!
The first one was very…biological. Looked like bugs and leaves and … more bugs. Intriguing, though. Made me kind of dizzy, but so does a lot of stuff with that particular type of movement. (Like the opening to Tatami Galaxy .)
The second one was probably my favorite. It looked like the future! Much less dizzying and oh so pretty. I want some jewelry like that. (Or giant prints for my walls, whichever.)
The third was also pretty biological, but in a radically different way. It reminded me of spores, cells, little tiny worlds covered in trees – all contained in a single solid container. Kind of scary in some ways, if you think about it too long (well, if you’ve watched the same movies/read the same books I have, that is). It would be neat to have some beads based on the design, though. You could make a lot of fun things with beads like that.
Overall: awesome! I’m not entirely sure how those are all the same thing, but that’s okay, I don’t need to know. the explanation is probably beyond me anyway. =p