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LuxXeon — 3dsmax Corona Mandelbulb
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Published: 2013-06-18 15:45:18 +0000 UTC; Views: 5777; Favourites: 48; Downloads: 30
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Description
Yes, this is an actual 3D Mandelbulb fractal, created natively inside of 3dsmax 2012, using the Alpha version of the newest PathTracing render engine plugin, Corona Renderer. Corona looks like an incredibly promising and powerful plugin render engine for Max. One of the most amazing features it boasts, in my opinion, is the ability to create and render true 3D fractal objects, like this Mandelbulb, directly inside of the 3dsmax environment. You could then combine the fractal with all of the other standard features available to you in 3dsmax; like particles, polygonal or nurbs geometry objects, models, render materials, etc. This particular Mandelbulb was created at only about 6 iterations. I have no idea how complex or detailed the bulb could get if I crank up the iterations, but I'm sure it would tax the render engine after a while.Corona is a Progressive Path Tracer rendering engine, but it can be customized to render with some other useful algorithms, and can also be easily configured to render with completely unbiased results, like Octane or Maxwell. Corona uses only the CPU, but it does so with incredibly fast and efficient results, even with unbiased parameter settings. I was able to render this Mandelbulb in under an hour, for example, with unbiased HDRI lighting, and glossy reflective surface materials. That's amazing. I wish it was able to take SOME advantage of my GPU, because I have a fast card, but I was very shocked at how fast this engine is even without GPU accelleration. This really opens a whole new world of possibilities to 3dsmax users who are interested in fractals or mathematical rendering. Corona is free to download in Alpha. Don't know if plans for the future will keep it free, or what the price point might be when it gets out of Alpha, but for now, it's incredible and very interesting to experiment with. I wouldn't recommend using an Alpha renderer for production, however.
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Comments: 48
How many bounces of global illumination did you use out of interest?
Very rare to see true GI fractals, even today.
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PS: I have a couple more renders of this fractal, using Corona render engine, on my ArtStation page. I don't think I ever posted those renders here on DA. You can check them out here: www.artstation.com/artwork/9R2… if interested. Thanks again.
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Thank you. I couldn't help myself when I first got the Corona render engine. I was amazed that they had incorporated a true 3D fractal into the algorithm as a volumetric object, so I had to play with it. If I remember correctly, this render was done with true Progressive Path Tracing (PPT) and unlimited bounces. I'm sure there's a mathematical limit or termination point involved with the calculations under the hood, but the settings were extremely basic and I used the Unlimited progressive option. So there were no pre-calculations or approximation maps created beforehand, it was all brute force PPT. The bounces and progress only ended if I manually terminated the render. I believe I let this one go for maybe 30 to 45 minutes before stopping the progress.
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Thanks for the info! Are you able to manually set the bounces explicitly such as 0,1,2,3,4,5 bounces etc.?
I'd love to see how the change in bounces affects the realism of the object. That's always something I've been interested in - the limit of perception in terms of how realistic something is (whether it be due to bounces, or number of rays etc.) and comparing the stages. Happy to pay say, $20-50 to find out if you can.
Those other renders are gorgeous btw - looks like they have one or two less iterations, not the full 6? Love to see higher res!
Oh and 45 minutes ain't too bad - I wonder if it would have taken much longer with a glass-like material.
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In Corona render engine, you can't really specify the number of bounces per say. I think the bounces are influenced by the time and pass limit you set. If you specify unlimited, then the bounces continue until you manually terminate the render. So how many light bounces occur in each pass is the real question I suppose, and I'm not sure the answer to that. It would be interesting to find out how they handle bounces per pass. It could depend on the number of lights in the scene, the size of the lights, and other algorithmically influenced circumstances of the scene at hand, based on the physics they employ under the hood. This is an interesting question, and I'll research this further. The progressive rendering limits are based on specified settings you can incorporate as either a time limit, noise limit, or pass limit. There's no mention of bounce number anywhere in the interface. Under performance settings, we can tweak the GI/Antialias balance, Max sample intensity, or the Light samples multiplier. I assume the combination of these settings influences the bounces of light in the scene. The raytracing architecture of the render engine is based on Intel's Embree engine, and there are some experimental settings such as changing the sampling mode, the environment sampler, and the solver type which I assume also impact the bounce count in each pass. Yes, the material will play a huge part in the time of the render. If I had used a glass material for the fractal, then the render would have been much noisier, and the noise may have never fully cleared up without a denoiser in post-processing. I could certainly try this render again with variables to test the results. It could be fun to do.
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Thanks for the response! Shame about not being able to set the number of bounces or rays explicitly, but yeah if ever you get the chance, be nice to see a glass version.
Just seen on Reddit, Disney made an animation of the Mandelbulb: twitter.com/DisneyAnimation/st…
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That's very beautiful. Interesting approach to it as well it seems.
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Wow, the most realistic I've seen yet with all that GI! Great work.
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Attack of the Mandelbulbs! Looks like a Borg ship on acid. Yikes!!
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I like it! It looks like it could be something from the works of H.P. Lovecraft, perhaps Azathoth, the blind idiot god. Or perhaps Yog-Sothoth himself.
Best Regards,
Learstang
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wow now Max can do this?! I don't know much about fractals so I'm having a hard time understanding the details you wrote but I get the basic idea. It does seem interesting and promising! Fractals have always been quite mysterious and fascinating to me
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3dsmax can't do it natively; you need to download and install the free Corona render engine for 3dsmax, as this Mandelbulb fractal is an object available only as part of that plugin render engine, but it creates it inside of Max, yes.
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nice bulb! just one thingie: i think your matte shadow/ reflection is a bit off ->your bulb material is a bit transparant. or did you mean to make it that way? in that case, nice work ^^
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Thanks, but it's not MB3D. It's generated in 3dsmax natively through a plugin renderer. Much appreciated though.
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The mini-minibulbs looks very strange... which formula is it?
Cool anyways!
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I don't have access to the formula used to create this. It's part of a plugin render engine designed for 3dsmax, and the only thing exposed to the user for this object are iterations to increase density, detail, and some other parameters. However, the render engine is still in alpha stage, so there's still a lot of development to do, and if they decide to keep the Mandelbulb object as part of the plugin, then I'm sure more features will be exposed, and more control over the formula, etc. will be made available to users. Thanks!
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Well... 6 iterations is very low... I think that might be a part of the "problem" Still a nice image though!
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It does sound like a very promising program.
I swear the things you're able to do LuxXeon, they blow my tiny mind.
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You are so very kind. Thank you.
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Very interesting. I've tried many times to export Mandelbulb objects so that they can be used in 3ds max, but the process of exporting them messes up the geometry. The approach of generating the bulb directly inside 3ds max seems like a better solution, but I'm not sure if it would allow you to zoom right into the inside of the model to find interesting nooks and crannies to render- which is my approach to Mandelbulb rendering.
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Yeah, this feature, like the renderer itself, is still in it's alpha stage; so while it can get very detailed through increasing iterations and other params, there's not nearly as many variables and programmable parameters like there are in, say, Mandelbulb3D. That entire application is dedicated to this sort of thing, of course. However, you can get really close up, even at this early stage of development, and find some cool "terrain" to render. So i'm sure in the future, as the plugin develops, this might get more robust, but only if people find it useful. Otherwise, it may just get scrapped in favor of dev in other areas of the renderer. For now, however, it's a really fun feature just to mess around with for a while, but serves no other purpose than to show off the engine's rendering capability.
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Excellent fractal render, can you export the generated fractal as .obj or .stl ?
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Good question. I haven't tried yet, but I believe I can convert it to an editable object, which would be converted to polygons and exportable. However, the density would be outrageous, and I'm not sure my machine would be able to handle that many triangles in one scene. As it is now, the bulb is represented in the scene as a point cloud, which is only surfaced/triangulated at render time by the render engine. This allows me to see it in the scene, so that I could have other elements inside 3dsmax interact with it, but saves memory and CPU power until I'm ready to render.
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actually, the mandelbulb is never triangulated during render. I have code for it, but it would be unfeasible, you would need millions of millions polygons to get some decent detail.
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Yeah, detail is dependent on iteration variables. I only used the default of 6. This could be increased for much more resolution, if you were to get closer, etc.
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5*! I'm still searching for a way to extract the fractals from mandlebul3d to max! Do u have any tutorial about how u did the export?
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I didn't export this fractal from Mandelbulb3D software. This is a mandelbulb object that was generated inside of 3dsmax using a new render engine, Corona. You download the Corona Renderer alpha release, and once installed, under the objects panel in 3dsmax, you will find the Mandelbulb.
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I tested new corona A5 and it's super fast!
Dof is fake on your render?
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Yes, it's really fast. Faster than even Octane, which is amazing, considering Corona only uses your CPU to render. No, the DOF here is rendered with the camera settings in Corona.
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Thanks! I thought it was pretty cool to have a Mandelbulb fractal that could fully interact with geometry, lights, and other things in a standard 3D scene.
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wow. That"s so cool. Looks like it was hard to do
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