All I wanted to do was test out reflection in Mandelbulb 3D.
I hadn't really used it before (this was back in 2015), so I wanted to just test the waters a bit. I needed a smooth surface to do the reflecting and some other forms to reflect.
My experiment developed, as they often do, into something I really loved.
Philospherics
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Gallery: Fine Art
Max. Print Size: 22.5" x 30"
“I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.”
-- Richard Feynman
The Creation Process:
For a smooth surface, I thought a sphere would be perfect, so I loaded up sphereIFS and framed them (remember that I wasn't really planning on making a gallery piece, I was just experimenting...):
Next, I needed some crazy irregular surface that would show up nicely being reflected. I went through a few formulae until I found genIFS... It consumed the spheres at first (left image) so I had to tweak two of its parameters to get it more under control =) ...:
Then I got to the lighting, colours and reflections... First I rendered some hard shadows (left image) and then I calculated the reflections...:
I was very, very happy with it. At this stage of my artistic "career", I hadn't made much that looked so cool ;P ... So I played around more with the colours until I got to what you see in the original image. I also used a Photoshop plug-in to get those cool explosive granulations... (I need to find that again!).
Thank you for your upvote 💖
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A few recent posts of mine:
Prophecy, Free Will and Evidence(?) for God | "Seaflake" | Gallery: Motifs | "The Shadows In Her Eyes" - Poems, 012
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