3D Buddhabrot (2012)
This is an application that renders 3D variant of the Buddhabrot fractal in real-time using the AlloSystem. Buddhabrot is generated by following the trajectories of each point in the space while it’s generating the Mandelbrot fractal, and visualizing how the trajectories occur in space. In this piece I start off with a single 2D rectangle in space, and plot thousands of points along the trajectory of each point on the rectangle. Color is added according to the orbit each trajectory takes, and the result is a magnificent aurora-like visual in space. Since this was created using AlloSystem, you can navigate the world freely, while changing different parameters that greatly change the fractal.
Next pictures are from an alternative application of the 3D Buddhabrot. These are volume ray casted images of the 3D Buddhabrot on the GPU generated using GLSL. Instead of directly rendering the trajectories, I first generated a volumetric data containing the fractal and rendered the volume itself. Since it was using the GPU, it ran much smoother, but it lacks interactivity. Also it could only show parts of the trajectory due to memory constraints. However the knowledge gained during this project led to the Fractal, which fixed these problems.
