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darrellp — Reflecting on Spheres
Published: 2007-12-31 11:31:43 +0000 UTC; Views: 323; Favourites: 1; Downloads: 0
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Description
Haven't played around with 3DS Max for a while but thought I'd dust it off and make something. This is really a bunch of raytraced reflecting spheres inside a larger sphere with a torus floating above them.I like the fact that it almost looks like some sort of Islamic tiling but then you look at it more carefully and you can eventually see the reflecting spheres.
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Comments: 8
Beautiful...Reminds me of the first time i used Joel Fabers pie variation in Apophysis
Me--->
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Sorry for the belated reply, but thanks for the nice comment. Interesting how stuff in (virtual) "real life" can take on fractal properties!
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Tessellations are what you're talking about. MCE studied them are borrowed a lot from them.
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Well, with the exception that tesselations, strictly speaking, are periodic. It's true that most islamic patterns are indeed tesselations and certainly Escher employed them a lot, but mine here isn't periodic but radially symmetric so, strictly speaking, isn't a tesselation. BTW, the incredibly cool book that covers all this is Grunbaum's "Tilings and Patterns". One of my favorite all time books. Hard to get these days but worth every cent!
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I agree, however, you mentioned it in your description & was just saying. Of course you could argue whether that's based on what goes into the art or comes out of it.
I've been playing with "Designing Tessellations" by Beyer. The "Tiling and Patterns" book is out of print, and appears to be available on Amazon for $110 used.
Oh well, maybe there'll be a re-print someday.
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Not sure I've seen the Beyer book. I'll have to check it out. I was lucky and bought the Grunbaum book new a million years ago. Mine's getting kinda ratty but what a great book. It was pretty expensive at the time for new - something like $60-70 and I thought about it for a while before ponying up. There's another one called something like "Tilings and Dissections" which isn't bad - I think Grunbaum was a co-author. It's more about Decomposing one tiling into another. Lots of other good stuff in various recreational math books and Martin Gardner. Then there's polyominoes, etc., etc.. Man, we live in an interesting world!!!
Thanks for the comment on the Beyer book!
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Thanks! I like it too but hasn't received that great a response. Maybe cause people don't look at it long enough to really recognize the spheres (which, incidentally, intersect each other - especially towards the center).
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