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I just downloaded MB3D yeasterday and spent all day with it.  :D I have a few questions:

When I try to add a background image instead of the gradient, it seems to just not work. I tried all different jpgs... am I missing something?

I went through John Whitaker's tutorials and they were very helpful. Much of what I try to do though- I get a "formula not found" error. I see Jesse's stickied thread above but I can't figure it out. It leads to another thread with a bunch of stuff... but.... what do I do?  Ahy help greatly appreciated!

I'm not a m3d expert, so only a guess about this.
I guess you also can't see the background gradient - you see a fog color
in the d Fog and Ambient tab the slider settings might obfuscate the settings of the background. I'm sure you find out yourself, which ones  :dink:

Either set the fog in the ambient tab to zero, or check "add to background depth" in the Back pic tab. D-fog shouldn't be a problem since it is turned off by default. You might want to uncheck "as full background sphere" in the back pic tab, to have an undistorted background. If you have "formula not found" error's, you most likely are not referring to the right folder. Go to the "Ini" tab (left top of the main screen) and check that the M3F folder location is the one where your formula's are. If you haven't done so yet, upgrade all your formula's from this link: http://www.fractalforums.com/mandelbulb-3d/re-custom-formulas-and-transforms-release-t9810/

Hope this works for you

Thanks! It turns out both my problems were caused by the ini settings. I thought I could load a background pic from anywhere- didn't realize it had to be located in the specific directory. Everything is working.

Ooh- another question: I see antialiasing for when I want to render an animation, but can't find it to utilize on a still frame...?

Also, I notice when I did an animation there seems to be some kind of camera clipping... distant objects suddenly disappeared. I've also seen other people's animations where near objects seem to get cut off by the camera- is there a setting for this.

I promise no more questions after that.  :embarrass:

ok , I was wrong last time, so gimmy annother chance. Actually there is no antialiasing function in m3d. It works by downscaling and filtering bigger renders (1:2 and 1:3 mostly).
For Stillframes the "pros" here still prefer scaling after postwork in PS, GIMP or whatsoever. But m3d does a pretty good job here too especially on downscaling 1:3.

So.. are you saying that if I scale up to say, 3200x2400- if I'm viewing 1:3, a saved render will be 800x600 antialiased?

no, 800x600 it will be at 1:4.
1:3 @ 2400x1800 will save an image of 800x600

I remember having read somewhere (here on FF or probably in the readme file, which is a "must-read"...) that M3D does antialiasing for 1:2 and 1:3 scaling factors, but not above.

Holy cripes- I never looked at the readme file.  :D

you can still read this in m3d. just click on "viewing" numbers in main window, only those two ratios are marked as "aa". Above - we should be in common - it does not really make sense -while I don't know, wether it stops filtering...

:hit: oh u!

:D

I have a question about software to render the movie from the slides that are created in the animation, what is available besides virtual dub?

I use a simple little program called 'time lapse assembler' it is very easy and quick to use. However it seems it may be for OSX only. http://www.dayofthenewdan.com/projects/time-lapse-assembler-1/  (http://www.dayofthenewdan.com/projects/time-lapse-assembler-1/)

And besides that, what's wrong with VirtualDub?

VD is great, but it's a strictly linear video editor.

Non-linear editing makes life much easier.  And the ability to layer and do "Motion Graphics" like in some of the more expensive editors allows for things otherwise not possible in a simplified editor like VirtualDub.

I don't know of any free non-linear editors though.  With or without layering.

I know loads of them, but none can handle image sequences
some mentioned here http://www.fractalforums.com/non-fractal-related-chit-chat/adobe-creative-suite-cs2-for-free!/msg56708/#msg56708 (http://www.fractalforums.com/non-fractal-related-chit-chat/adobe-creative-suite-cs2-for-free!/msg56708/#msg56708)

personally, I stitch the raw image sequence together with VD and a lossless codec (like legarith). For the non-linear cut, you are free to choose one.

I was going to post that very link - but they changed the wording on the download page to read that the files were only for those who purchased CS2 in the past.

I got it when the wording did not state that, so consider myself "Grandfathered In" - but there is no longer a way to twist the post to mean that it can be used by anybody for free.

Keep an eye on that page though!  They may change the wording again!  It has changed at least 4 or 5 times so far, thus there is hope it will change again.

Antialiasing in MB3D is only available Postprocess on Images saved by Downscaling the original Render. ie 3600x1800 rendered 1:1, Downsized 1:2 with an automatic AA factor of 2 = 1800x900...Downsized 1:3 with AA factor of 3 = 1200x600.

The Antialiasing in MB3D downsizing is accomplished through using a Lanczos Resampling Algorythm during the Downsizing process, it works very well but still. You get  better results and have more control saving 1:1 and Postprocessing yourself in whatever Editor you prefer.

The app i mentioned has just the one purpose as far as i can tell, which is stitching together image sequences. 'time lapse assembler' it's basic, but a great tool to have alongside other software

the thread was meant for the cs2 downloads, but the link points to a particular post, where I listed some free non-linear video editors, with the pros and cons as far as I can judge. named: wax, jahshaka, cinelerra and the blender-packadge, which contains an advanced video editor. for all of them good tutorials are available...