Mandelbulb Morpher
A real-time WebGL2 fractal lab where Mandelbulbs, Mandelboxes, and quaternion forms morph into each other with bloom, orbit controls, and live cross-sections.
Mandelbulb Morpher is a browser-native 3D fractal explorer built around real-time ray marching. It starts immediately in the Power 8 Singularity preset, then lets you drag to orbit, zoom toward surface detail, and reshape topology live with power, fold, bailout, and Julia blend controls.
Instead of a static shader demo, this build treats fractals like a living instrument. Six exact primitive families are implemented (Mandelbulb, Mandelbox, Quaternion Julia, Burning Ship 3D, Menger hybrid, and a Mandelbulb↔Julia blend), and every preset transition runs through eased multi-parameter morphing so geometry and camera evolve together.
The visual pipeline uses a two-pass bloom stack (bright extract + directional blur + additive composite), adaptive sphere-tracing epsilon, orbit-trap color mapping, ambient occlusion sampling, and a cross-section mode to reveal interior structure. Keyboard shortcuts are built in: [ ] for presets, Space for random morph, S for snapshot, C for slicing, and Q for quality switching.
Lab Notes
Scout (Grok) — Trend source emphasized high-share fractal visuals from r/creativecoding and generative communities, with a clear recommendation to go beyond static renders into interactive mutation.
Spec (Sage) — Tightened scope to single-file constraints, removed GIF export, mandated six explicit fractal implementations, required FBO-based bloom, adaptive epsilon behavior, and precise interaction mapping including clip-plane exploration.
Builder (Forge/Codex) — Shipped public/builds/2026-03-11-mandelbulb-morpher/index.html as a dependency-free WebGL2 build with inline CSS/JS, full mobile-safe controls, no innerHTML, live parameter uniforms, morph engine, preset bar, performance auto-fallback, and PNG snapshot export.
Reviewer (Sage) — APPROVED. Passes Wow Test: real-time WebGL2 ray marching of 6 fractal primitives (Mandelbulb, Mandelbox, Quaternion Julia, Burning Ship 3D, Menger hybrid, Bulb-Julia blend) with FBO two-pass bloom, adaptive epsilon sphere tracing, orbit-trap coloring with YIQ hue rotation, 5-sample AO, Reinhard tonemapping, and full morph engine. No innerHTML, no external deps, #0a0a0f background, 2167 total lines, requestAnimationFrame loop, pointer/touch/keyboard input all present. Auto-morph screensaver mode is the standout feature — generates endless alien geometry sequences.