Voxel based Mandelbulb in POV-Ray
Information
2010-02-15
This is a POV-Ray rendering of a 1024x1024x1024 voxel computation of the standard 8th power mandelbulb, as seen at Skytopia.
Rendered in 640x480, 24 FPS, using a combination of ray tracing (using two light sources) and radiosity.
Aesthetically, this doesn't really surpass existing videos. The fractal structure is not immediately apparent due to the relatively low voxel resolution. For me, this was more of an "I must climb it because it is there" idea. ;)
To see a way better, truly breathtaking mandelbulb rendering, see the work of Iñigo Quílez. Also, check out how Cyril Crassin does this in real time (!) using CUDA.
Comments
Looks like Kush.
I made one of those using the shovel in minecraft. ;)
the future of gaming? I think so! The resolution will improve with time. Atom based solutions for 3d graphics is the future for unlimited detail. Polygons is not! :)
@pathfinderTV1 The Question is "Do we need more detail". People who hype voxel based graphics for gaming don't get that the biggest problem these days is not the rendering capabilities. A very important problem is the fact that no matter how much detail you can display, you need to create it first. And most games these days lack of good character design and interaction with the player. In the end, you'll be just staring at a square and will hear the speakers sound. That's not enough interaction.
@TheRealNici It's not as much that Unlimited Detail / Voxels can provide an amazing amount of detail (because you can make each point as small as you want) as it is you can do this with very little proccessing power. With polygons, the system has to display every polygon in an area (regardless of if you can see it) and depending on the detail this number can become quite high With Unlimited Detail, it only displays what you see and only with the number of pixels you have sorry if im unclear
ATOMS in games? Shows how far we've come since the 80s when a line and a dot floating across the screen was considered high tech.
@KradYsuom
Hiding unseen polygons has been a feature in home consoles since at least the Dreamcast...
Voxels have their own handicaps. While you can create detailed landscapes easily enough, animating them is nearly impossible.
@DejaVoodooDoll Animation will come eventually, it's not impossible; just currently difficult and probably hard to understand especially since no one (that I know of) has done it before. A long time ago, the only animation we had was swapping sprites at regular intervals to imitate realistic movement. Now we have programs that can procedurally create their own animations and textures. The statement that science fiction now is tomorrow's fact has been proven. We even made a TIE fighter engine
@KradYsuom tell me more about this TIE fighter engine. :P
@pathfinderTV1 It looks absolutely lovely from a distance. But do remember that voxel objects require heaps of memory and is bloody hard to animate. Not to mention how much more work it requires to create the objects from scratch.