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Hello all!

I've been playing with Mandelbulb3d for a little while now, and I'm having trouble figuring out how to get the black dots, or black grain off the fractal images. I'd like them to be cleaner, smoother - with less grain. Any ideas on how to get the grain out of Mandelbulb3d fractals?

Thanks!
Michelle

Hello and welcome!

Reducing grain is tricky and depends on the actual file, but good starts are to decrease the raystep multiplier and stepwidth limiters, but these increase render time.  You can also increase the DE Stop, but that can change the geometry of the fractal.

Alternatively, render a few times larger than you intend, and reduce the size of the image.  That removes tiny grain , but again - render times increase.

It's a trade off to find balance.

If all else fails, and you don't find it too offensive personally, a bit of post work with a blur tool can smooth out those areas convincingly.

Thanks so much Sockratease,

You're not going to believe this, but that makes sense to me now! If you would have told me that a couple months ago, I would have went.... wha? lol! I get really bothered by the fine lines with jaggy edges. Bigger areas can be blurred out in Photoshop I guess, but there's gotta be a way to get them cleaner. I've been saving all my files, so I'll be able to post some text files here when I get things dialed in a bit more. Workin on it, thanks so much for the info!

Now, if I want to put my fractals on my own server, can I put link them here? That would probably be easier than trying to load them in the gallery. And wouldn't use the extra server space here.

I just made one that looks pretty simple to me, neat - but simple with just a blue background - 17 hours  :o ha! Figured I'd save the file and name it "choke" for now.

Been coming up with some nice fractals. Found some tutorials in Deviantart for Apophysis, so I might play with that for a few. Take a break from Mandelbulb3d. It's neat stuff to figure out though. Hours go by. One good thing - on render times I get up from the pc and stretch my legs. Clean house, cook, play with the boys, run errands...  :dink:

I'd like to share some of my images here, so guess I better go find a decent place to put them. :)

Thanks!
Michelle

Whoo-hoo!

I found a "hyperlink" icon.  :D

http://www.michellebrouse.com/fractalforum/golden1.jpg (http://www.michellebrouse.com/fractalforum/golden1.jpg)

I was pretty happy with that one.  :)

Shoot, and I looked for an "edit" button for the last post - but didn't see one.

Please nevermind the main url of michellebrouse - I haven't figured out what all I want to put on there yet, and just installed WP so far. Just wanted to add a couple fractals on that server so I could link them. One of these days I'll actually work on the website.  :)

There's a few ways to reduce noise in a render. using a low Raystep Multiplier, typically I use, a Raystep Multi of .025/.01 and Stepwidth Limiter of .1/.05. First step random will make each raytrace start at a different point Randomizing any uniform noise, Normals on DE will reduce some noise in Formulas with shakey DEs. The most important is low RSM and SWL, it depends on the power of you processors how much very low Raystep and Stepwidth Limiting will affect Render time, the lower the longer but the lower the cleaner and more accurate the render will be.

It is never necessary to use such a small raystep if you downscale your render, I think that normally a raystep of 0.2 works fine with a tiny amount of smoothing, and a 1:2 downscale makes the work in 1/3 of the time :)
The noise is often present in small zones and the rest of the render is ok. In this case, go to postprocess tab and recalculate only noisy zones.

Use only ssao24r for shadow it is much more realistic :)

I rarely use hard shadows but your choice...

I completely agree about SSAO24r Shadows and Hard Shadows but totally Disagree on the RSM. If you were talking Stepwidth Limiter I would agree below .1 is un necessary but not on Raystep. I never render twice the size and save at half, I would rather have complete control of the full size render in Photoshop after Render. That way I can use a noise filter of my choice for any remaining noise and do any touch up of ragged edges and use a Resample filter of my choice to resize by whatever amount needed for posting on the different sites all of who all have different Upload limits.

Yeah, I see a lot of people speak of post-work as if it is cheating or something.

Yet layering in Ultra-Fractal is not considered cheating, but if you layer in post work you are a Blasphemer!

Here's a quick example of post work to save time and enhance a project:

I rendered this in under a minute in M3D:

(http://www.sockrateaze.com/stuff/post1.png)

I liked it, but it was too grainy.  Decreasing the raystep multiplier didn't do enough with small decreases which boosted the render time to over an hour at this resolution.

So in 2 minutes of post work, I turned it into this:

(http://www.sockrateaze.com/stuff/post2.png)

I liked it a lot more, and another minute of post work changing hues and saturations got this:

(http://www.sockrateaze.com/stuff/post3.png)

I quite like the results and it took about 3 minutes of post work in ArcSoft's Photo Studio 5  (I shun adobe and don't own photoshop and find it morally offensive when people use the word "photoshop" as a verb!!)  (It's a Noun!)  (and a Very Overpriced Noun at that!!).

Yep, some purists even consider using DoF Blasphemy, since when is Architect using an eraser cheating or a Painter using Paint knife to change an area cheating, bet Davinci used one.
I love Postwork, besides being just plain funI think it's essential to give your work that human touch, it is after produced by a machine. I use Photoshop because I got it for free from my sister but there are many others, I also use PhotoFiltre, Paint.net, Dogwaffle, theGimp on and on. PS7 is my fav but each different one has one thing or anoher that it does better than the others so it's not uncommon I use 2 or 3 of them on an Image depending on what I'm after.

I should have qualified the statement about RSM and SWL, lowering it doesn't cure all noise all the time, it highly depends on the formulas being used also, some formulas are just inherently noisy and or time consuming to render and lowering RSM just exacerbates the problem.

Thanks a bunch guys!

That's a nice fractal Sockratease. Love the blue version. I'm not particularly hung up on whether or not to do post work in Photoshop. I like to see how good I can get a fractal in whatever program I'm using to generate it, then LATER I can take fractals in Photoshop and play with them. LOL! One learning curve at a time.  ^-^ Thank goodness I've been using Photoshop since around 1998. Still learn new things in that program 14 years later. I assume it's the same for learning fractals.

Thanks so much for all the info everyone. Much appreciated. I'll be coming in here and going through each post and trying everything mentioned. Seems I have to read - then try - then read. :)

Here is an example I just did - with the first one small, and you can see the grain I was talking about:

(http://www.michellebrouse.com/fractalforum/beast2b.jpg)

Then in the second version, you can really see the jagged edges on the "spray lines" in the top half:

(http://www.michellebrouse.com/fractalforum/beast2c.jpg)

Then on the last one, it looks a lot better. I got lucky, and couldn't figure out what the heck I did to smooth it out!

(http://www.michellebrouse.com/fractalforum/beast2e.jpg)

Fun stuff!  :D

Hmmm, actually a couple more questions while I'm in here. When I save my Mandelbulb3d files, I'm just using the second "save" tab - moving across all 4 buttons, saving the parameters, the text file, and the .jpg image right from there. Should I be using the third "save image" tab to save my .jpg files? I'm not sure if that makes a difference or not.

Also, when you use someone else's starting point for a fractal - and come up with something that you like, how the heck do you know if anyone else has created a fractal like yours? And how do you know when it's far enough away from the original that you could call it "your own"?

For instance, those 3 fractals I just posted. I like the last one a lot - the original starting point was this one from the parameters list thread:

(http://www.michellebrouse.com/fractalforum/beastorig.jpg)

I think that I have sufficiently altered the fractal from the original starting point, but have no clue if someone else did the same thing.  :-\

Thanks!
Michelle

When you use the first button in the 2nd tab, you'll save everything you need (The trade-off is that it takes a little more space on your harddrive, depending on the size of your render, than all other options   :-\). I always use the third tab to save images, but that's mainly because that used to be the only way to save images in "old" versions of M3D.

As to posting and using of parameter files: My opinion is that if you post them on a board, you're essentially saying: "Hey, I don't care what you do with it. I found them, but I give them to the world and everyone can do as they please with it". Which means that in my book you can render the same parameter set without any modification and post it wherever you like. However, there are people with a different opinion and of course, doing as I propose does not get you any points for originality :dink:.

One thing I've found is  if you get noise outside your fractal, try increasing min iterations to about 10.  Reducing bailout sometimes helps as well.

Good point Madman, I doubt just loading parameters is very creative. Takes all the fun out of it anyhow!  ^-^

It is great to have something to start with though, because it takes a little time to figure out the program. It's nice to be able to load a parameter in, and get something cool to look at while you figure things out. I found some tutorials at http://www.veengle.com/s/mandelbul%203d.html - so I'm going to watch those now. Can you believe I've never used that navigator yet? Mercy. I had no clue the first button on the save tab saved everything I need too - thanks for the help everyone! :)