What is Mandelbulber?
Mandelbulber is a powerful open-source software application for generating and rendering complex three-dimensional fractals. Developed by Krzysztof Marczak, Mandelbulber leverages modern GPU computing capabilities to calculate and visualize intricate fractal shapes and structures in high resolution.
Unlike many other fractal programs that only render two-dimensional slices of four-dimensional fractals, Mandelbulber can render fully three-dimensional fractal meshes. This allows users to smoothly fly or animate around the fractals to observe them from different angles and perspectives. The software is able to calculate and display a wide variety of different fractal types including Mandelbulbs, Julia sets, Iterated Function Systems, and more.
Mandelbulber provides an extensive set of parameters and settings for customizing the fractal calculation and mapping detailed textures onto the fractal surface. There are options for adding lighting, shadows, animation, andeffects to create stunning and photo-realistic images. The easy-to-use interface makes adjustment parameters extremely accessible to both beginner and advanced users.
Due to the intensive computational power required for rendering 3D fractals, Mandelbulber is designed specifically for modern 64-bit computers with dedicated GPU graphics cards. It can leverage CUDA and OpenCL to take full advantage of the parallel processing power of the GPU to accelerate fractal rendering speeds many times over.
With very frequent software updates, an expanding community and gallery of user-submitted images, powerful documentation and tutorials, and a free and open-source code base, Mandelbulber provides exceptional capabilities as both an artistic fractal generator and an education exploration into fractal mathematics.