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"Pentanonoclus" | dIFS Pong #001

mandelsagePosted for Everyone to comment on, 5 years ago5 min read

Months and months ago, I started a series of "fractal Pongs" with Del Angharad, known throughout the world wide webs as @welshpixie ... Del is a fellow creative comrade who I've known for quite a few years. And when I say creative, I am perhaps understating the truth.
 
I don't know anyone as artistically proliferate as her. Her talent knows no bounds. Her claim to fame is her hand-drawn doodles and mandalas, which are often sci-fi/fantasy themed. She has an adult colouring book published by Barnes and Noble called "Meditative Garden Mandala Coloring Book" and in searching for the link, I found that she has quite a few more books for sale on Amazon that I didn't know about!
 
Besides that though, she is also a "professional amateur" photographer (one of her lightning shots was recently featured in the National Geographic), and her crocheted creations are uniquely pretty. And she writes! Poetry and fan-fiction, mostly.
 
Added to this is what this post is all about: She does art using fractals too =) ... And we artists who use fractals sometimes play a game called "dIFS Pong", which Del and I did months ago on Steemit. It works like this: Someone starts and creates something using only the dIFS set of formulae available in "Mandelbulb 3D", a famous, free 3D fractal program. The parameters are then saved and passed on to the Pong partner. They take and tweak them - could be a formula swap, or only tweaked paramters, or both. The idea is to create a new piece of art, but without changing it too much.
 
After a while, you end up with a series of amazing images, and you end up learning a lot along the way.
 
Unfortunately, we ended up stopping after several awesome pongs. My idea in resurrecting this post is to first show you all on whaleshares the results of our game, and then, when I reach the last one, I'll start playing Pong either by myself, or with someone else willing to join me here on Whaleshares! ... When the time is right, I'll get in contact with an artist or two that I know and try get them over here! 😉
 
And so to get the ball rolling, here is the official first Pong. It was a good start, I felt:

Pentanonoclus

~~



What I did:

 
So to start the series, I thought, let me keep it simple. So I decided I would use only 2 dIFS formulae, and 1 dIFS transformation formulae.

As you can see in the first image below, I chose "boxIFS" for the first formulae. It's useful for providing a "floor" or "walls" if needed. In the second image, I added the "PenN-gon-IFS" formula (one I have never used before). After changing the camera angle a bit, and slight tweaks on the second formula's parameters, I got this cool-looking stargate-ish portal (the third image). Aha! I thought... I can work with this!

The fourth image was a result of adding the transformation formula "Apollo2D-IFS" ... It took a lot of tweaking because the box formula was getting in the way, making an unsightly square right in front of everything, but finally I found a way to disguise it while maintaining a good aesthetic.

Next came the fun part... The colours. A simple use of a colour map that I already had did the trick. I didn't want to use reflections at first, thinking to keep it simple, but after a quick test, it just looked so cool that I had to use them.

If you are interested in maybe trying your hand at 3D fractals, I recommend you start exactly like this. IFS formulae are easy to use and so you can learn the program on them. In fact, why don't you load up my parameters and try tweaking them yourself? ... I know it will seem intimidating at first, with so many buttons and sliders everywhere, but there are tons of beginner tutorials available now (a quick google will reveal them all!) so even the most illiterate of PC users could get into this now. (It wasn't so when I first got started!).

Word of warning though: Don't use this program unless you have a very good cooler on your CPU. It burnt out two CPUs of mine before I realised and bought a decent cooler. Use a temperature monitoring program.

Here are the parameters:

Mandelbulb3Dv18{
g.....Y/...E4...w....2....EhLhFNt9J4.HcNitRtl46EzVdK9c9KRy1/KDo/ckWazgkpZgd81Wzj
................................Zc0Xv0JAiz1........A.ZX3................y.2...wD
...Uz6.....E..../M.0/......y1...k0....E3.....2I3WuSOeQpD/..........m/dkpXm1....U
z.EnAnQD12../..........wz.................................U0.....y1...sD...../..
.zHnAnQDhUREnWmsmvPWa9c9vZmNzslJro1j7WkDeuvJwNU1bxnE6d6cZF.vy2FujvN8L6nDOzVk1af2
mwHUoSi.cSJ0z2TFJ/dFBQqjU.....I98.........UaNadD.6....sD..G.....................
.............oAnAt1...sD....zw1.........................................b....k1.
.....OD8wz1.......kzpxzzz1.U..6.P....U5...EB....m.CS3c3.kQ.F....6/...I1.....SF52
...U.qFG9yzb2zzzRYoWzz7lz16.pc..zvTy..E92FpyVY.k6s41pmER5.A..........2.28.kFrA0.
.Ub96aAIVz9.1se7Umvxz0........../EU0.wzzz1...........g1...................E.2c..
zzzz.............0...................2./8.kzzzD............8....................
/EU0.wzzz1...................................2CcN/UvNPcveeWCNq0.yRiibHJJUk1f..XR
SvBmx3CcN/UvNPcvQsLsUa3.ibhVi1bTV1OK.sSq4uCly3CcN/UvNPcvMwLsUa3.ibhVinqTV1OK.sSq
4uCkz3CcN/UvNPcv..EsUa3feeWCNqGQIJ36wk8EwyLsUa3f................................
E....AU.V2U.....I....o....UMjVLG4B3.U.pPrJaQ.............................sU1....
/6U./2....UaNaNaNaNmzAnAnAnAnO/E9.......Ey9.......EzzMaNaNaNa7yD................
...................................wz...................kz1........wz...........
.....................2.....3....8.....JNitI9bxaP7NoI............................
.sU1....06U..........MxckpX0Lz.EaNaNaNaNez1.............................UzXAnAnA
nAnoz.........zD........c.2.......U6.3iSIsuFV9zD................................
................................0....E/...E0....//rPglqPmEI97NoI................
..............U/4MU..................................AnAnAnAnAzD................
........................I.YaNaNaNaNez........s0E........z.2.....................
............................................}

I look forward to seeing what you do with them ^^



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