×
  • Galleries
  • Writings
  • Favorites
  • Shop
  • Contact
  • Amazing detail to explore!

    I've been intrigued for some time by Kerry Mitchell's Rotated Newton images (see the first five images in his Gallery 19, as well as Amoebae, Fire Dance and You and I in Gallery 21). While Kerry is unquestionably the master of this formula, I was inspired by his recent Giant Steps image to play around once again in his world.

    The formula is challenging to work with because what you see in Ultra Fractal during the creation process barely resembles the degree of intricacy that this formula will produce in the finished render. For instance, here's what I saw in UF:

    In UF

    Compare the above with the two rendered versions below.

    The difference between these two renders comes from varying the number of iterations performed. The glorious fractal structure in each is the result of substantial anti-aliasing during the render process:

    Two starting points

    I like both of these versions for different reasons. The stark contrast of light and dark tones in the first is quite striking, while the second contains amazingly detailed fractal structure. I was unwilling to select one version over the other, so my next thought was to try to combine the best qualities of each into a single image. Not only did I arrive at a happy compromise, I wanted to create a very large render that would reveal the marvelous depth of fractal structure.

    The first 144+ hour render revealed a tiny but unforgiveable error in my method of merging the two images. Once fixed, I waited another 6 days to get the final version of Sixtene:

    Sixtene

    I have uploaded a high resolution render that can be explored in depth (much like zooming into Google Earth) here. Enjoy!

    Category: About