Living Watercolour Engine
Private deploymentFractal mathematics, rendered as painting.
A custom GPU rendering engine that turns fractal structure into imagery which reads as watercolour and gouache rather than computer graphics. Built from the ground up for large-format, immersive work: ultra-wide canvases, seamless loops, and render times measured in seconds.
This engine is deployed privately on commissioned work rather than sold as a product. Get in touch to discuss a project or licensing.
Off-the-shelf tools don't do this.
Conventional fractal software struggles with the things immersive work demands: extreme aspect ratios, resolutions large enough for multi-wall projection, and animation that loops perfectly for continuous display. It also tends to look unmistakably computed, carrying the rainbow-gradient signature of generated art.
- Ultra-wide, high-resolution output designed for panoramic and multi-wall projection from the outset.
- A painterly finishing stage that gives the mathematics the texture of traditional media.
- Perfect loops, with every parameter driven periodically so the first and last frame match exactly.
Mathematics in, paintings out.
GPU fractal rendering
A GLSL raymarching and shading pipeline built for speed at very high resolutions and extreme aspect ratios: seconds per frame, not hours.
Multiple fractal formulas
Julia sets, Mandelbrot, Burning Ship, Tricorn and Phoenix, blended with domain-warped flow fields to produce drifting veins, layered landscapes, plumes and textural fields.
Painterly finishing
Posterisation, brush-like smearing, dithered banding and layered colour grading rework the raw structure into something warm and hand-made.
Curated colour engine
Hand-designed, field-aware palettes tuned to how colour falls across fractal structure, deliberately avoiding the generic look of generated art.
Seamless loop animation
Compositions animate into perfectly looping sequences, with every parameter driven periodically so playback is continuous and invisible at the seam.
Fully reproducible
Every image is generated from a recorded parameter set, so any result can be reproduced exactly, refined further, or developed into an animated version.
The work.
Technical detail.
- Type
- A custom desktop rendering engine: a GPU-accelerated raymarching and procedural-shading pipeline.
- Built with
- Python and OpenGL, with the rendering pipeline written in GLSL.
- Fractal formulas
- Julia sets · Mandelbrot · Burning Ship · Tricorn · Phoenix, blended with domain-warped flow fields.
- Composition modes
- Landscapes, plumes, waves and all-over flow fields, freely combinable.
- Output
- Extremely high resolution and ultra-wide aspect ratios, including 14,000 × 1,800 canvases for full-room immersive projection.
- Render time
- Seconds per frame at full resolution, rather than hours.
- Animation
- Perfectly seamless loops, suitable for continuous unattended display.
- Availability
- Deployed privately for commissioned artwork. Not currently sold as a general-release product, but enquiries are welcome.
More from the studio.
Planning an immersive piece?
The engine is built for gallery installations, projection environments and panoramic display. If you have a space or a commission in mind, we'd like to hear about it.