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3D fractal music video

8

Vince-YSP writes:

Hi, my name is Vince. I just finished the music video "path tracing" for my band Fusion Talks.
It was created in my free time during the last one and a half years using mostly free/open source software.

Even if a lot of the footage (the fractals) were done in Madelbulb3D, nearly all additional backgrounds were made in Blender with some scenes in the last third of the video and obviously the path tracing title ;)

For the backgrounds I had to 3D reconstruct the footage with Meshroom (a free, open-source 3D Reconstruction Software) and used the meshroom2blender addon to import the file into Blender. Thankfully the addon creates an animated camera for Blender! There is no way to export a camera from Mandelbulb3D.

Some scenes have moving fractals which I had to render new without any moving geometry, so that Meshroom could reconstruct it. Since I rendered the footage in a rather small resolution the 3D model was low poly, but gave me enough structure for orientation to add additional objects and for example to render some caustics for compositing.

Hope you have fun watching the video!

 

About the Author

Vince Holzborn

I`m working as 3D Artist since 10 years now with 3DS Max/Vray, but I use Blender (since 2004 or so...) for all my personal projects. Also I make music and playing Hammond, Piano and mostly analog synthesizer.

8 Comments

  1. Michael Fletcher on

    Huh. I wouldn't have thought to use photogrammetry to create a 3d mesh - but it does sound like a good compromise to overcome mandelbulb's geometry output.

    I did bump up the speed to 1.25x because my electronica music has to come with a side of mild heart-attack-inducement. ;)

    I'll give it 10/10, would suffer another arrhythmia event.

    • I don`t know if you get it right?! I used the photogrammetry for additional parts in compositing, using the camera to create for example a new backgrounds, or placing extra objects in compositing. The geometry itself was just used for orientation, or for example as ground for a caustics layer...
      I could have used Blenders tracking for that, but having a low poly geomety in the viewport was helpful ;-)

  2. Have you looked at Mandelbulber V2? It allows mesh export,. so you can put a 3D file from it into Blender and gain some better quality rendering of the fractals. I have just begun experimenting with it so nothing much to show yet, but I have hopes for it.

    It's a very nicely constructed video you've made and some of the keyboard playing sounds pretty shifty. Did you speed anything up after playing or play it all at final speed?

  3. Thanks!
    Yes, I did looked at Mandelbulber V2, amazing features, but I took me quiet some time to get into Mandlbulb3D and I found that rendering takes much longer in M V2, so I decided to stick with M3D.

    The music was played live, some Synthy tracks I played as overdubs after cutting to the best parts from jamming, so most of the composition was made in the DAW, but no speed up...
    All our titles you can hear on Soundcloud were developed by jamming :-)

    • I listened a few more times. The drummer is extremely good too, subtle and in the background when it's called for but strong and up front when needed. Some drummers have a lot of trouble with that balance, so it's good to hear a drummer than manages it so well.

      Mandlebulber is of no interest to me for its rendering, my plan is to use its excellent mesh exporter to transfer the fractals to Blender for rendering in Cycles or Eevee. That's why I mentioned it, but if you're used to another program you need a good reason to change and it doesn't sound as if there is one. I don't have the option of using Mandelbulb3D because I'm on a Mac Pro and there is no current Mac version. I was inspired by your video and making Blender renders of 3D fractals has definitely moved up my "to do" list a bit. Thanks for that inspiration!

      • Thank you for the kudos ;-)

        If you can handle exported data from Mandlebulber go on. On my workstation even the low poly data I used nearly killed Blender, and there were no comparably details.... if that works fine for you, let me know, so I will give it try!

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