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Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Fractal World: 35th Century Earth

These images I happily found quite by accident, in the initial stages of my exploration into other realms. In this one, I am almost sure I found a future Earth. I do not know whether this future is absolutely certain, or whether I'm only glimpsing at a possibility... Either way, it's fascinating, and I can't wait to explore it more.

35th Century Earth
The year is 3553 ... Earth still spins, orbiting the same old sun. Its atmosphere is no longer breathable, having been irreparably damaged in the 31st century.

The last surface trees died out over two centuries ago and exist now only as the highly prized objects of a hobby only the Elite are able to practise.

The green you see is a bio-synthetic, methane-to-oxygen converting plant grown by EarthCore, the global government organisation. They are the self-appointed caretakers of what is left of the rock in space human beings call home. 

The dark blue you see are water ducts, reaching the surface in order to keep the constantly flowing water cool. 

Energy has never been more abundant since we tapped into the earth's deepest geothermal depths.

The windows exist only because the vast intercity network developed early in the 24th century, covering the earth's entire landmass in just under a 2 centuries. From there, we had only one way to go: down. Before, the richest of the rich claimed surface level residences for the amazing "skyviews" caused by an already changing (though still breathable) atmosphere. Huge hivehomes were built in allocated areas below ground for the poor masses.

Now though, those same ma
sses exist only at the surface, when the atmosphere became poison, the air icy cold, the sky a constant, ominous red-black. The rich dug down, and continue to build lavish underground oasis's while the rest squabble over places to live that have as little atmosphere leaking into them as possible.


Lower Class Residential
A block of lower-class residential homes, a view from an opposite block. This picture taken by an EarthCore Archiver, whose purpose it is to collect information and data for the History Vaults.

Each one of those seemingly singular viewports in fact contains at least 20 homes.



Rural Lands
Nestled deep in a valley, and reminiscent of the ancient 21st century Chinese rice farms, this is a view of one of the once renowned factory farmlands, now, of course, completely abandoned since the Taint (when humans poisoned their atmosphere irreparably in the 31st century). 

The green you see is a bio-synthetic, methane-to-oxygen converting plant grown by EarthCore, the global government organisation. They are the self-appointed caretakers of what is left of the rock in space human beings call home. 

Do not be fooled by the blue tint of what was once verdant, kilometres wide, farmland. It is not water, but cold steel.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Mandelbulb 3D Tutorial: Julia Mode

Ok, back once again for another M3D tutorial page!

I'm going to assume that most of you already know what a Julia fractal is. (Not that it is vital for you to be able to use the Julia mode tab in M3D ... But if you're one of those people who dove straight into M3D and 3D fractals because of how cool they look, and understand little else about Mandelbrot, or Julia, etc, go have a look at my Introduction to Fractals tutorial. It will probably be worth it :) ).

Ok, well, in M3D, just as 2D fractals are plotted out on the complex plane (cartesian x-y axis), 3D fractals are plotted out in a cartesian complex "space" (x,y and z .. There's a "w" too sometimes but I'm really not sure how that works (yet!)).

And just as every point on that complex plane has a corresponding Julia, so does every infinite "voxel" in the 3D complex space.

Don't worry if you don't understand this... Just go ahead and try it out. I loaded up the first formula on the list: Benesi1Pow2.






Then, I simply clicked on the Julia tab, checked the little "Calculate Julia" tick box (with x=1, the rest 0), and clicked the Calculate 3D button.





Not a very interesting fractal I know... But I then played around with the x,y and z co-ordinates, and here's what I got:

Benesi1Pow2Julia x=0.1 y=0.4 z=0.2

Benesi1Pow2Julia x=0 y=1 z=0

Benesi1Pow2Julia x=-0.2 y=-0.1 z=0

Benesi1Pow2Julia x=0.5 y=0.5 z=0.5

Benesi1Pow2Julia x=-1 y=0.8 z=-0.4

Benesi1Pow2 Julia x=0 y=0 z=1 
As you can see, a lot of variation is possible with only one formula. And if you're zoomed into a Julia quite deeply, you can try tweaking one of the x,y or z parameters only very slightly, to see what changes :) ... It's a matter of trial and error, but some amazing images can be found...

My Fractal Worlds that I've just started (see previous blog entries) were all discovered using Julias of various hybrid formulae. (That's something to remember: You can combine different formulae and then apply the Julia, or you can choose one formulae, find a great julia, and then fuse it with some other formula.)

As they say at Fractal Forums, the possibilities are infinite.


If my tutorial is helping you, please consider supporting me over at my Patreon page.
I also have a deviantArt gallery.


Next Mandelbulb 3D tutorial page: The DE Combinate Button

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

But is it art?


The question of whether fractal art is real art has sometimes, sort-of, come up in my mind, but always was disregarded for "Of course it is!", and then I got back to exploring. But really... It seems to be a bigger issue, worthy perhaps of more than one blogpost. So from now on I'll be looking out for interesting articles/comments about this all over the place, and will post about it here. After a few posts, I'll create a page to add to menu above, as it is a subject worth featuring.

To start with, here is a piece by Mandelwerk called "Mona Lisa Orbittrapped" (See high resolution on Deviant Art)... He adds a comment beneath it in his dA account:

Mona Lisa Orbittrapped by Mandelwerk

The Louvre, the golden year of 2067.

& my 5 cents about finding a masterpiece in a fractal.

Opposite to some critics on the net I have a strong belief that someone some day will find a masterpiece, "Mona Lisa Class", in a fractal.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Fractal World: Organic

Here I discovered something extraordinary... Though only showing these three images, I've seen so much more... Entire planets that seem to be alive. Pliable, almost fleshy rock. Gigantic structures that seem to be breathing. Alien life, but extremely difficult to recognise as such. A lot more observation is needed.

Mitosis

Exodus 17:6

Osmosis


Thursday, September 15, 2011

Fractal World: Fuzzy

These first three images mesmerised me when I first encountered them. Upon applying my IDC's PCA (Probable Colour Approximation) function, I gained vision over the initially perplexing world and flew over fields and fields of what you see below. As you can see, the scenery changed quite drastically the further I explored.

Spore

Pollen

Seed

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Fractal World: Mechan

The first few 3 images I've managed to capture, of dubious quality, from the Mechan Universe. I have no idea of the nature of the locations, nor have I any idea whether the colours are accurate or not. With time, I expect to gain a deeper understanding of this fascinating world... Perhaps even capture images of a few living entities.

Antechamber
 This is the first image I captured. I called it Antechamber on a whim but of course no one can know what this location's purpose is. Much more exploration is necessary.

Antechamber - Higher Perspective
 This second image is exactly as it's caption implies. I took my IDC (Inter-Dimensional Camera) up and further back, and took another shot. The colours changed somewhat, and oddly enough, the shape of some of the structures changed too. Peculiar...

Sentinels
I tried different co-ordinates here and found these 6 interesting little guys. Actually, the same sort are in the previous two images too. Not sure, but I think they are the first signs of something life-like. Perhaps they're super-intelligent machine-beings, convening on the strange feeling they're all experiencing suddenly, like they're being watched... Or  could be that they're just sentinel drones, in their Standard Watch Positions assigned by the Omnimind.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Fractal Worlds

Hello! I'm back.

As you all may have noticed, I've not been posting things. Actually, probably, none of you noticed that :P ... But that's ok. It's been a combination of personal life problems and a flood of work I had neglected which I had to catch up on. I have been doing bits of Fractal Art here and there though, which you can see at my deviantArt account.



Out of everything I've done, I only REALLY love 2 or 3 of them. The last one, though, Mechaniclysm (above), gave me an idea...: