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POWER-8 WORLD

The Mandelbulb

The iconic power-8 3D fractal construction that looks like alien geology.

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The Mandelbulb fractal artwork
Original Fractal Trip procedural render
POWER-8 WORLD

2009 breakthrough

Daniel White and Paul Nylander developed a spherical-coordinate power construction in 2009 that produced the form now called the Mandelbulb. Power 8 became especially famous for its lobes, ridges and deep cavities.

Mandelbulb scene
Reference image created with Mandelbulber2 by PantheraLeo1359531; CC BY-SA 4.0, with inherited background credit detailed on Sources.
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How it is rendered

Distance estimators and ray marching make it practical to shade these implicit forms with normals, shadows, ambient occlusion and fog.