
My Journey into Fractals - jypepin
https://medium.com/@bananaft/my-journey-into-fractals-d25ebc6c4dc2
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alx
If you want to explore 3d fractals, I really recommend you to test this VR
experience:

[https://nshelton.github.io/vr/fractals/2017/12/30/RTA.html](https://nshelton.github.io/vr/fractals/2017/12/30/RTA.html)

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sheltron
hey thanks for posting! dev here if anyone has any questions about this
software or fractals in general. Gregory's work here is really impressive,
huge fan. Go fractals!

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gunn
Looks incredible! Can it run on desktop? Are there instructions to build?

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sheltron
vive only, there is a build for vive on there. You can also get the source,
there is a desktop interface but it's still under development and you probably
need to know unity to get it to work

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gunn
I love 3D fractal exploration, especially when it can be realtime.

It's a few years old now, but this is still the best demo I've seen:
[http://sub.blue/fractal-lab](http://sub.blue/fractal-lab)

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chrisweekly
Thanks for that link, @gunn! Terrific demo, agreed it holds up! Also,
tangentially, given so many people are on their phones, it seems other demo
sites showcasing desktop-only experiences really ought to follow sub.blue's
lead and embed a video. Sort of comparable to sending documents in pdf.

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IngoBlechschmid
The Mandelbrot set and all its Julia sets are part of a larger, four-
dimensional fractal. Explore it here (only JavaScript and WebGL needed):

[https://rawgit.com/MatthiasHu/FractalsWebGL/4d/page.html](https://rawgit.com/MatthiasHu/FractalsWebGL/4d/page.html)

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me_again
Shameless self-promotion, but see also
[http://edyoung.github.io/gnofract4d/](http://edyoung.github.io/gnofract4d/)

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romwell
Awesome software!

On the note of self-promotion, here's a simple Mandelbrot explorer to get
started with - but this time, it's animated!

Not comparable to anything above, but good to start playing with / coding
fractals.

(Web, desktop only.)

[http://romankogan.net/math/processing_js/mandelbrot.html](http://romankogan.net/math/processing_js/mandelbrot.html)

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sclangdon
If you liked this, you may be interested in Cyril Crassin's Ph.D. Thesis on
Gigavoxels, which can be used to do something very similar.

[http://maverick.inria.fr/Members/Cyril.Crassin/](http://maverick.inria.fr/Members/Cyril.Crassin/)

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ObsoleteNerd
This is mind numbingly beautiful. The fractals with lighting and shadows is
some of the best digital art I've ever seen.

I would pay proper money for a game that is basically a 6DOF spaceship game
like Descent/Overload but in this fractal realm.

~~~
_carl_jung
I've thought about this for a while, complete with HOTAS support.

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jypepin
Slightly related to another conversation from yesterday, mentioning Shiffman's
Nature of Code: [https://natureofcode.com/](https://natureofcode.com/)

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schaefer
really beautiful renders.

I've never seen 3d fractals with moody lighting before.

i would play the hell out of this, even if the whole of gameplay was just
bumping around in a ship (with hyper drive).

~~~
kennyadam
Don't know if you noticed, but you can download and play a build of this on
their Itch.io page:
[https://bananaft.itch.io/yedomaglobula](https://bananaft.itch.io/yedomaglobula)

Just messing about with it myself and it's unique and fascinating!

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schaefer
I hadn't noticed. Thank you! just in time for the weekend. :P

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radicalbyte
I love fractals.

A few weeks ago we were at the UMC Nijmegen for a CT scan (father-in-law;
liver-cancer; luckily slow-growing and treatable) they had an exhibition of
illustrations from Haeckel of microscopic organisms. It struck me at the time
just how much those structures reminded me of fractals as well as how
beautiful they are.

You can see some pictures here:

[https://www.mediamatic.net/en/page/370096/the-haeckel-
projec...](https://www.mediamatic.net/en/page/370096/the-haeckel-project)

And a book:

[https://www.amazon.com/Art-Science-Ernst-Haeckel-
Multilingua...](https://www.amazon.com/Art-Science-Ernst-Haeckel-
Multilingual/dp/3836526468/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1538756108&sr=8-1&keywords=haeckel)

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abecedarius
Similarly, on visiting the Sagrada Familia one of my first thoughts was that
it was like stepping inside a fractal.

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eggy
I've spent days playing with Mandelbulb 3D and other fractal programs. I was
really into the projection of 4D strange attractors onto a 2D plane or
printout (my current screensaver). I would burn weeks in FPS mode navigating
these Lovecraftian and Fantastic Voyage [1] worlds.

[1] I refer to the original 1966 movie, since the remakes didn't quite make it
my opinion! And Raquel Welch.

~~~
kennyadam
Any chance of a download link for your current screensaver, please? :) Sounds
interesting.

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mholt
That's so cool. Reminds me of the work at [http://sub.blue/](http://sub.blue/)
\-- especially look at Fractal Lab: [http://sub.blue/fractal-
lab](http://sub.blue/fractal-lab)

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gdubs
This brings me back to the hours and hours I spent as a kid with VistaPro [1],
watching 320px fractal landscapes render, one scanline at a time.

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VistaPro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VistaPro)

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marviel
Thank you for posting -- I've been super interested in this subject recently
after seeing some really great live visuals at a few concerts(1). I'd love to
add to my current set of visualizers (2) with something like this.

(1) [https://goo.gl/989gYr](https://goo.gl/989gYr)

(2) [http://whoadude.cool](http://whoadude.cool)

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subblue
A great write up - very interesting to read about your approaches and the
various issues I also came up against with my own Fractal Lab experiment.

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kwhitefoot
> I am bad at both arting and coding.

Wish I was that bad.

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chakravala
Please check out my Fatou.jl julia package, which allows you to share and
reproduce 2D fractals with short one-liners written in Julia

[https://github.com/chakravala/Fatou.jl](https://github.com/chakravala/Fatou.jl)

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KennyCason
This is so cool! I recently just started tinkering with a fractal expressor
that results in voxel world in libgdx to roam around in. But secretly in the
back of my mind, I think you are building what I really want! Love it. I’ll be
following your project. :)

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max_likelihood
Beautiful work. I set this: [https://cdn-
images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*y8eAZdMBfXkIB2S8X...](https://cdn-
images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*y8eAZdMBfXkIB2S8XXyksQ.png) as my new desktop
background ;)

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mistermann
This video linked from the article is very cool:
[https://twitter.com/Bananaft/status/894675135260745729/video...](https://twitter.com/Bananaft/status/894675135260745729/video/1)

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Insanity
These are absolutely beautiful.

I really like the mood it sets, but I was hoping to see some code for the
fractals to be honest :)

Great work!

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selimthegrim
I feel compelled to plug the book Indra’s Pearls here, by David Mumford et al.

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isoprophlex
Just stellar. Wow. Whatever game comes out of this, I want to play it!

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keyle
Great trailer at the end.

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onemoresoop
Great stuff. Hope you integrate it into your games.

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hexo
What a delightful journey, thanks for sharing!

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mikeheaton
I studied fractals for years. But it didn't matter how deeply I looked, they
still looked just as complicated as ever.

