"It’s like Interstellar, but without the narrative or humans. I suggest you put this on full screen and make sure you have your sound on – soundtrack choice is amazing."
IVAN SERGEJEV, ARCHITECTURAL BLOGGER
Archaic Fractals. by Julius Horsthuis music: "Cometa"by Murcof
Background
Once, on a Friday, the render farm was idle and I decided it would be a waste if nothing would be rendering over the weekend. I quickly did a 'fly-though' of a simple fractal, and tweaked some sliders.
The next Monday, after having checked the renders, I told myself it didn't look that good - no real progression, no revelation, ugly colors and too much morphing detail, causing serious frame blending artifacts when time stretched. (I always time stretch the fractals- as rendering every frame is usually too render intensive)
After a couple of weeks I tried some things with the raw renders, and saw that black and white really improved the look. Then, I started to use some 'old film' effects, such as dirt and scratches. Especially the flickering gave it a very trance-like feel.. I ramped these effects up, starting low, and slowly increasing, as the music progresses as well.
Another effect I used, besides the heavy depth of field, is a layer of directional blur, blanketing the straight surfaces with a kind of strings. This I thought looked like the tesseract scene from Nolan's movie 'Interstellar' that had just come out. Murcof's score enhanced this effect to the maximum.
This movie has been re-rendered into the virtual reality experience 'from nothing', however it looks and sounds totally different. It's in color, 3d and with a different score by Christopher Libertino. But the motion, morphing camera and speed are exactly the same.