Julius Horsthuis: The Beauty of Fractal Art

Have a look at the magnificent beauty, created by the clever algorithms envisioned by a talented VFX artist from Holland! All created with the outdated Mandelbulb 3D (MB3D) Fractal Rendering Software.

Julius Horsthuis is a 3d artist from Amsterdam, who’s done some outstanding work in the field of fractal art. He’s mostly working with VFX for film, which he learned at Open Studio (2003). He worked for a number of production companies, including Revolver (2004-2005) Carbon (2006-2010) and Hectic Electric (2010-present). Mostly he done work for the local cinema of Holland.

Julius became interested in fractal art in 2014, when he started experimenting with various environments, being inspired by the works of Krzysztof Marczak. He has created a series of gorgeous fractal shorts and built some beautiful experiences for VR. his work achieved incredible support from the community and was even featured in galleries at Cineglobe film festival in CERN. You can also find his experimental work at the Oculus Rift website.

You may be wondering, how does he do this? Well, most of his work is rendered with a free program. Mandelbulb 3D (MB3D) formulates dozens of nonlinear equations into an amazing range of fractal objects. The 3D rendering environment includes lighting, color, specularity, depth-of-field, shadow- and glow- effects. In other words it’s a little magical thing.
In a recent interview to 3DVF.com he shared some info about his creative process.

I usually compare this process with nature photography. The fractal art is the opposite of design. I start a project trying to combine all formulas in Mandelbulb3D to see if interesting shapes emerge. Sometimes nothing happens, but if it happens it’s something extraordinary. I begin to explore and scout these fractal shapes.
Forms begin to emerge, and when they start to look like something, I’ll play with it a little bit more. For example, if a form looks like a mountain, I’ll color it in the similar manner to a real mountain, and illuminate it with the sun low on the horizon, add some fog. This is important addition, cause the human eye actually seeks what it knows best. The danger of fractal art is becoming too abstract. I also apply heavy color correction in After Effects to advance the look that I want to set up. I usually appeal to color palettes from known films. Sometimes I completely reverse the animation.

So far, all of his work was pre-rendered. Julius did not try to experiment with real-time 3d. he did spend some time with Unity, but he did not really dig it. So far it’s traditional rendering it seems. For more details about fractal art, be sure to check the official website of Julius Horsthuis and his interview. There’s heaps of great videos there.

Author: Kirill Tokarev