Mandelbulb

thingiverse

The Mandelbulb, a 3D version of the famous Mandelbrot fractal, was developed through collaboration between enthusiasts at fractalforums.com. Discover more about it here: http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.html. Mandelbulb3D, used to generate this data, is available at http://www.fractalforums.com/mandelbulb-3d/. This 3D fractal has various model versions like PNG sequences and STL isosurface meshes with different polygon counts. Voxel-based models, despite their large memory footprint, are advantageous for models with vast surface areas such as fractals or lattice structures in 3D printing. The original voxel dataset of the Mandelbulb is presented as a PNG sequence, which has been further processed and filtered to generate a manageable polygon mesh suitable for 3D printing. For more insights, read my blog post "Voxels vs. Polygons" at http://40westdesigns.com/blog/?p=371, and my Engineering.com article titled "2012: The Beginning of the End for Polygons" at engineering.com/3DPrinting/3DPrintingArticles/ArticleID/4523/2012-The-Beginning-of-the-End-for-Polygons.aspx.