Exploring The Menger Space

misoversaturated

misoversaturated

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Exploring The Menger Space

My favorite pastime is to create epic nonsense by messing around with the Menger fractal.
I'm going to post some concoctions here, everyone is welcome to contribute.

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On a hiking trip in a remote eastern area I came about this thing:

mengercloth.jpg
Cheetah Renderer
 
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The Menger Adventure - #02

Thanks Zoo!

It looks like a Christo Installation with all that white cloth.


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But the surrounding is quite disturbing.
There are four large elevated concrete platforms, with open scuttles.
Like someone wanted to build four houses and stopped after the cellars were finished.

Why would there be an underground complex totally in the middle of nowhere, no roads, no fences, no warning signs and no people around ?

I'm getting really curious!


mengercloth5.jpg
Falcon Renderer
 
The Menger Adventure #3

Obviously this is a giant underground bunker!
What secrets does it hold?
Are there treasures hidden, dangers waiting?

The temptation is irresistible, I'll climb in to find out!


entrance.jpg
 
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The Menger Adventure #04

inside.jpg

This thing is huge!
Being still on the upper level I have no idea how far below the ground is.

- everything is relatively clean, as if it was kept shut mostly
- there is lots of weird copper piping, fortunately not charged
- it is quite hot inside against my expectation

Don't know if anyone is receiving these messages but I'm going to keep it up until I get out again ...

inside2-.jpg

Now this is how the Cheetah Hexahedron Fractal looks from the inside :wink:
I only cut off the top half and applied a concrete texture (after finding that my procedural approach was quadrupling render times).
I added some openings and pipes to spice up the scenery.

Maybe I'm the only one who is interested in the magic of indirect lighting, but here, inside a simple menger box, you can see it working.
 
Both scenes are awesome.. I loved the white clothes one.. definitively like an art installation. Great renders both scenes, they should be in the cheetah gallery.
 
The Menger Adventure #5

Thanks Guys!
Creating weird stuff with Cheetah is big fun :smile:

Bunker2.jpg

The further inside I get, the stranger the scenery becomes.
There is a mad installation of copper pipes and a big transparent tube that seems to hold a liquid with a slight blue glow.

If that is a cooling device it has to be rather inefficient without a better radiator, especially underground with bad air convection.
No movement can be seen, but there is a faint noise and the heat of course so apparently it is working...

Bunker1.jpg

Weird Pipes:
Hexahedron Fractal + Build Modifier > PolygonToSpline Script > make editable > Sweep Creator
Play with Spline Type: Nurbs, Bezier Curve & Bezier Spline with soft interpolation
 
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The Menger Adventure #6

Thanks Martin!

These pictures do not go well with the bright forum background.
Even at their low resolution they look better in fullscreen view.

Bunker0.jpg
Cheetah Renderer
Cycles Animation

Touchdown finally!
I think I reached the ground floor of this huge thing.
Everything is empty and tidy and just plain mysterious.
In the middle a large block is walled off which I think the faint noise and the heat originates from.
I cannot find any entrance but I will never be able to check all the horizontal connections above.

And there is this single blue sphere!
As with the other stuff I have no idea what this is about.
There are openings in some of the vertical columns but the shafts inside have no ladders and are difficult to climb.
But I need to find out more and will not give up yet!
 
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The Menger Adventure #7

Thanks Guys!

The Sheets of the kite thing have a simple white white diffuse material with ~50% transparency by a fine grained fractal noise.
I wanted no plastic look and killed any specular and reflective components.
There is a slight transparency blur too.

For the modeling I used a particle mesh of the original menger object with a simple 3x3 plane and the middle polygon selected.
Turning this into a polygon object retains the selection and so I can drag down the middle parts of the sheets all together to achieve the sagged look before crumpling and subdividing.


But now for a new episode of The Menger Adventure with totally unexpected tricks, like menger remeshing with the bevel tool and animating the transparency refraction index!


hatch.jpg

After a snack and a short nap I have dared to climb into the concrete columns. Some have doorways and are for maintenance whereas the others carry conductions I guess.
But why there are no ladders or steps is beyond me but anyways I found something looking like a possible entrance to the big central cavern.
There is something like a numpad with a funny icon in the middle.
On pressing it opens up immediately and -

OMG it looks like a fusion plant!
Behind a thick glass pane there are big balls of glowing plasm in a great spaceframe!
I'm going to take a quick video with my iPhone and go close the hatch before I start to shed my hair!

glowcage.jpg
 
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Awesome stuff 'MO'...!!!!!
(cool vids too)
Absolute gaming inspiration!
:icon_thumbup: :icon_thumbup: :icon_thumbup:
 
The Menger Adventure #8

Thanks Al!

Now for the last installment of my epic menger madness series :smile:
I'm running out of tricks, the following one making use of the menger box plus subdivision and crumple modifiers brought my MacBook to its knees with sparse indirect lighting.

I hope everyone enjoyed the ride and got some inspiration about how to do moody lighting with simple means.
If someone has an idea what else to make from the menger fractal don't hesitate to show it off here!

Thanks again everyone for watching!

cave.jpg
Falcon render

Trying to worm my way back into the bunker I suddenly realize that the shaft I'm in is going deeper than the already underground floor level!
Though it's high time to get out of here before evening comes and the thing probably shuts itself off I cannot resist and take a look.

To my great surprise there is a large cave under the bunker!
I leave a light hanging at the rope and try a quick foray into the unknown but it is too vast to explore thoroughly.

But there is water in here and I think now I know how the cooling of this secret fusion plant works.
What I still don't understand is what the energy produced here is used for.
There is no heavy wiring for high current to be seen anywhere.

Looks like I will not uncover the last secrets of this miraculous place but it is definitely stuff to think over on the way back to my base camp.
 
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Hey I have a question, where is the Menger fractal? does it come with Cheetah or did you do it in some other way? the only fractal I can find that resembles to your bunker a bit is the Hexahedron, but it's not as interesting as your bunker lol.. thanks.
 
Joel Ruiz said:
Hey I have a question, where is the Menger fractal? does it come with Cheetah or did you do it in some other way? the only fractal I can find that resembles to your bunker a bit is the Hexahedron, but it's not as interesting as your bunker lol.. thanks.
Click to expand...

The Hexahedron is the Menger fractal. In various posts, misoversaturated gives a few clues as to how he or she takes the fractal and modifies it, with bevel, subdiv etc.
 
Joel Ruiz said:
where is the Menger fractal?
Click to expand...

Hi Joel,

Paul is right, the hexahedron fractal is a Menger Sponge.
Since v6 it is a Cheetah object, before there was the Menger script among the polygon scripts.

To get the bunker you need to make it editable, cut off the top half or a bit more to get some openings for the light, flip normals and then move the camera inside.

It takes some fiddling with a distant area light then, but even a hdri with a plain white texture works.

Adding some subdivision and crumple modifiers would turn it into a cave.
 

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