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GMT

GMT

Generative Math Tracer

Real-time 3D fractals in your browser. Explore, light, animate, and render infinite mathematical structures.

Launch App
Or read the tutorials →
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Apps

GMT is the main app. Fluid Toy is a companion built on the same engine. The demos below are minimal showcases of the underlying plugin engine.

Main app

GMT — Fractal Explorer

The full real-time 3D fractal renderer. 40+ formulas, path tracing, animation, video and VDB export.

Launch GMT →
Companion app

Fluid Toy

Real-time 2D fluid simulation playground built on the same engine — same plugin host, save/load, undo, and timeline.

Open Fluid Toy →
Engine demos

Demo

Minimal plugin-host showcase. Panels, save/load, undo, shortcuts — all from generic engine code.

Fractal Toy

Stripped-down raymarcher — two formulas, DDFS camera + lighting. The smallest useful renderer on the engine.

Mesh Export

SDF → mesh / OpenVDB export prototype. Bring fractal geometry into Houdini, Blender, and other 3D tools.

Features

Fly through fractals in real time

GPU raymarching at interactive framerates. Steer and the camera responds — the tool moves at the speed of your thinking.

Path tracer for finals

When you find a shot worth keeping, switch to Monte Carlo path tracing. Global illumination, emissive surfaces, soft area shadows — the same scene, cinematic.

40+ formulas, hundreds more importable

Mandelbulb, Mandelbox, Menger sponge, Kleinian, IFS, Amazing Box, polyhedra — plus 326 Fragmentarium and Distance Estimator Compendium imports ready to render through the Workshop. Interlace any two formulas per iteration for hybrid layering.

Animate any parameter

A canvas-scale keyframe timeline (thousands of keys, no lag) with Bezier easing and a Graph Editor for curves. LFOs and audio-reactive modulation drive organic motion — drop in an audio track and animate to the beat. Camera paths handle infinite-scale zoom intelligently.

Smart PNGs, high-res stills, 4K video with sound

Every PNG re-opens as a complete scene. Bucket renders at any resolution, tiled across multiple PNGs for huge prints. Offline video accumulation up to 4K — and exports mux your timeline audio straight into the MP4.

VDB mesh export

Capture scenes as volumetric OpenVDB meshes — built for creative pipelines into Houdini, Blender, and high-end VFX tools.

Getting started
01

Load

Open GMT — a Mandelbulb appears in a few seconds.

02

Pick a formula

Open the Formula panel on the right and click any thumbnail to load it.

03

Orbit

Left-drag to rotate, right-drag to pan, scroll to zoom. Press Tab for fly mode.

Then try the in-app tutorials, or read through these →
Community gallery

Latest scenes posted by GMT users. Click a tile to open it in GMT.

See more, browse by formula, or post your own at app.gmt-fractals.com.

FAQ
What do I need to run GMT? +
A modern browser with WebGL2. For comfortable real-time exploration, an RTX 2070 or equivalent desktop GPU is a good baseline — older hardware and integrated graphics still run it, especially with Lite Render enabled, but expect reduced framerates.

Browser note: Chrome and Edge give the best performance. Firefox runs at roughly half the framerate because of an open WebGL2 bug on its side — the app still works, just slower. Safari is fine but has its own quirks around video export (see the Exporting tutorial).
Does it work on mobile? +
Partially. The core engine runs, and touch controls exist for the viewport, but the UI was built desktop-first and needs more refinement on small screens. Mobile-GPU framerates are modest on complex formulas. Serious work is best done on a desktop or laptop for now.
Can I use my renders commercially? +
Yes. The GPL-3.0 license applies to the app's source code, not to the images or videos you produce with it. Your renders are yours — sell them, print them, put them in films, it's all fine.
Is GMT open source? +
Yes — the client is licensed under GPL-3.0. Source code is on GitHub. Contributions, forks, and self-hosting are welcome.
Do you collect my data? +
Not beyond what's necessary. No analytics cookies, no fingerprinting, no ads. The app runs entirely client-side — your scenes, renders, and settings stay on your device unless you explicitly share them. Posting to the community gallery is opt-in and requires signing in.
Where do new formulas come from? +
GMT ships with 40+ built-in formulas plus a Formula Workshop that imports from Fragmentarium and the Distance Estimator Compendium — hundreds more shapes just a click away. You can also write your own GLSL or build one visually in the Modular node editor. See the Workshop tutorial.
Can I share my scenes? +
Yes. The community gallery is live — sign in with email or Google, pick a username, then submit from inside the app. Your scene posts as both an image and a .gmf file so others can open it, remix it, and learn from it. You control visibility (public or private), your watermark text, and can delete your submissions any time.
How do I report a bug or request a feature? +
Open the ? menu in the top-right of the app and pick Send Feedback. You can attach your current scene with one click, so bug reports come with everything I need to reproduce them. Mails me directly — I read every one. Anonymous is fine; sign in or leave an email if you want a reply.
What does "GMT" stand for? +
Generative Math Tracer, GPU Manifold Tracer, Grand Mathematical Topography, Guy's Math Toy — a different name every time you load the app. The cyan M stays. It's for Benoit B. Mandelbrot, whose set started this whole territory.
Support the project

GMT is a one-person project. If it's given you something — an image, a rabbit hole, an afternoon — any contribution goes straight to keeping it free and open-source.

Special thanks to moondchan, escapism_only_please, and NM whose support and feedback has shaped the project. The full list of people who made this possible →

Support on Ko-fi Support via PayPal Join r/GMT_fractals