HI Blenderartists,
I guess everybody knows these times where you browser Wikipedia for one thing and realize, there is an interesting connected topic - and 30 min later you completely forgot what you where researching initially and ended up in some completely different rabbit hole.
My rabbit hole yesterday contained Lorenz Attractors.
Lorenz Attractors are a set of solutions to the so called Lorenz systems, a set of three differential equations. As these do look quite nice and as I was interested in learning about differential equations anyway before, I thought why not use Blender for an initial exploration, as the python API should be usable to numerically solve these, and visualize the solutions.
So I wrote a python script that randomizes the system’s parameters and calculates the positions of a system’s path. These positions are then utilized by drivers for the x|y|z locations of particle emitters - and poof, there be Attractors!
However, I found displaying them in an attractive way while still showcasing their cool 3-dimensiuonal nature in a still render quite challenging. After some failures with “blue ink on white” and “structure hinted with shadow catching planes in the background”, concepts, I settled with some kind of “Lorenz field in an alternate dimension” setting. Not very science-y, but at least it glows!
If anybody has some cool ideas on how to render a mathematical function attractively in a neat presentable style, please let me know!
