Be warned - if you have a weakness for eye candy or algorithmic art you can easily get lost in the Mandelverse for long stretches of time. It's a complex, somewhat arcane program - but we'll be concentrating on just a few features. M3D is Windows only but it does work on Macs via Wine or CrossOver. This is an app that allows you to explore the strange new world of 3D fractals. We'll be using a program called Mandelbulb 3D to generate our shapes.
#Mandelbulb 3d voxal stacks software#
If you're comfortable installing new software and you don't mind poking at a few mysterious menu items then you'll be fine.įirst, we need to load up our virtual assembly line with a few free tools. You won't need to master any of them, though. We'll just pop in to use the features we need, then pop out and onto the next step. There are 3 main steps to this process, and each involves a different piece of software. I suppose this is a little less physical than most Instructables, but these 3D printers are starting to blur the line between real and virtual. We'll be using a 3D printing service like Shapeways or Ponoko - so all you'll need is a PC, some free software, a few hours to tinker, and a few bucks for the final 3D print. I'd like to show you how you can bring some of these incredible shapes into the real world via 3D printing. Recent advances in the Fractal Arts have surfaced a whole new breed of 3D fractal shapes - and they are fantastic! Check out this channel on Vimeo to see some of the possibilities: Mandelnauts. Who doesn't love a good fractal image? Beautiful, ornate shapes expressed though a series of simple formulas.