Welcome to Fractal Forums

I spend maybe 5-6 hours most days in this program :surf: Need I attempt to express my appreciation any further??
Here is a selection of ideas I would love to see implemented.

1. Click and drag section in image window to re-render section of image with altered parameters. Time saving for checking morphing.

2. Option to save two versions, DOF and non DOF, per animation frame.

3. Render all layers per animation frame, in separate folders. Allows for epic post processing. I need all the trip value I can wring from my poor CPU  :)

4. Render multiple shader options per frame via animation. I guess this won't be possible in v1.17 due to rewrite... I use v1.15 most of the time for this reason. It would be awesome to be able to render multiple versions with and without glow, different palettes etc. Basically I want to get the most productivity per CPU cycle.

5. Add raytraced reflection distance to zbuffer. Not sure if I'm on the right track, but the effect I want is depth of field accuracy through raytraced reflections. I love the chrome sphere so much, but it's not ideal when it looks like it has a textured surface rather than actually reflecting something far away. Also this would make lights reflected on water look gorgeous, I just know it!

6. 2nd image window for julia finding and measurements. Saves the time taken re-rendering over and over, checking julia sets and reverting to mother fractal. Option to render to window 1 or 2. Guess I could just have two programs open and copy paste between them! Gosh just writing this out is a good problem solving process. Still, it'd be handy  :)

7. Copy variable to all keyframes, function. This could probably be done in a text editor?

8. Option for SSAO either always on or only at end of render. Version 1.17 is more tedious to navigate but quicker to render animations.

9. Render pause button - then resume. I'm constantly chipping away at one of many animation projects, some of my animations take 30-40 minutes per frame to render, I just want to pause mid frame and have CPU free for other intensive tasks. Could I do this with some other method of assigning CPU to mandelbulber?

10. Reflection depth of surface to shift palette so reflections are different colours. So if it's the first reflection, palette is shifted x. If second reflection, palette is shifted 2x and so on. Some nice effects possible here methinks.

11. Open sound control (OSC), or MIDI, control of variables for realtime navigation. Quantum computing TARDIS console. Ok I'm dreaming. One day!


Peace, my self similar homies. May your DE error rates be minimal and your CPUs breathe freely.

Maybe you should think of keeping things easy first. :dink: Rome wasn't built in a day. Buddhi does a fabulous job on this program and some of your requests are almost easy to solve with some additional software and a bit of brain jogging. Until Buddhi finishes the implementation of your list, I'd recommend the use of a capable text editor and a simple spread sheet.
If all this is too slow or too complicated - mandelbulber is open source...

Nice list of whishes. I will add some comments:
Ad. 1. It's nice idea, but need many changes in code. Now it's not prepared for rendering regions.
Ad. 2. Should be easy for implementation. Can you explain why you need this?
Ad. 3. Rendering of separate layers is removed at all from Mandelbulber. It made everything too complicated, created very high memory consumption and reduced flexibility of rendering algorithms.
Ad. 4. Look at point no. 3
Ad. 5. It will not work as you think. In OpenCL version there is real DOF which works also with reflections.
Ad. 6. Now you have option to get Julia constant from the image. Could you write more what you exactly need? It is not clear for me.
Ad. 7. This is very good idea, but difficult for implementation. But it is also on my "to do" list.
Ad. 8. Can you explain what you mean? As I understand you ask about to have SSAO also visible during rending. From version 1.17 it is not possible. Now SSAO needs complete image and can't be used in the middle of rendering (now uses much less memory)
Ad. 9. Are you asking about pause during rendering image? It would be possible to implement. However you should also manage priorities in task manager if you want to do many things simultaneously. When I render some animations I change program priority to make it nicer for other applications. On Linux you can start the application with 'nice' command.
Ad. 10. I will look interesting. I have to think about it.
Ad. 11. Yes, you can only dream about this now  :tease:

Buddhi,

1) Is it feasible to make the number of iteration entered in hybrid tab to vary and hence morph between keyframes, for use in searching out optimum proportional formulae influence with hybrids. Even if the difference in iterations has to be restricted to whole numbers factors of the "frames per keyframe" rate.

 ie if  keyframe 1 had 22 MBox iterations and keyframe 2 had 10 MBox iterations, a difference of 12 , then "frames per keyframe" rates of 12, 6, 4, 3, 2 & 1 would work.

2) How about being able to have a linear option instead of cat-mull rom spline?

3) I am guessing the useful 1.121 versions ability to change colour speed and slide the colour palette is no longer possible to implement while rendering in 17.2.

I'll try from my point of view:
one iof the big advantages of mandelbulber once was the multipass rendering, giving a quick glance on your result with all fx.
now, that ssao is only added at the end of rendering makes navigation and judging quality pretty difficult. In my eyes no improvement too...

Actually, I'd agree about the SSAO thing.

It's great for the final render times to have it applied only at the end of a render, but it does slow down navigation a fair bit.

A single pass/multipass option would be really handy, but just in your own time Buddhi.
The program's already packed with features, and I know you're busy with the OpenCL stuff too, so I can wait. :)

Thanks for the replies all!

2. Having two or more versions of each animation frame saved allows me a lot more creative freedom when mixing video. The more I get from each render the better, and many shapes and planes look completely different simply with altered colour speed. Why not take advantage of multiple shader options per frame? I can do animations with many saves (on v1.15) with a macro clicker program but have to overestimate render times. Oh yes, one of my wishes was for a macro writer in the program. Shall I add ideas to the original post or these ones? There are more most days. Love to share ideas and maybe have them evolve. Might be a great time saver in there waiting to be reinterpreted. Glad to see this sparking posts of others' ideas too. Yeah keyframing hybrid iterations sure would be neat, round to nearest integer.

6. I thought it may be convenient to have an optional extra render window with mouse controls like measure, find julia constant, set light pos. Then a render can be kept there and data grabbed from it while navigating in the main render window. Not crucial at all, really  :tongue1: I got this idea from using an alternate version of the software in a dream.

Would love #2 even if it's not for animation. An option that would save the file image0001.png image0001d.png if you had some kind of a toggle to save a version before and after post-process shaders. Since it would be great to cut down on the rendering time if you can simply tell it with post-process variants you wish to save just so you don't have to re-render them.

Stuff like
- DOF off/on (or degree of dof variants, ie front, middle, back focus, or 3, 6 or 10 radius)
- SSOA off/on
- HDR off/on

That way if I get something rendered that took me 4 hours, I can have a variety of options to work with without re-rendering especially since it's not like I can save the raw data to be loaded later and re-post-processed (that's a feature I like of Incendia EX V, you can save the buffer and then load the buffer back later to either continue rendering or alter without having to start from scratch).

*bear in mind I'm talking bout toggles from a no-gui perspective, since what I described could be done manually via the GUI if you were around after it finished rendering.

Here are a few more of my ideas.

12. Save window layout OR internal macro writer. Using macros from an external mouse clicker program is very tricky as sometimes the windows open in different places on program start.

13. Abort DOF at x% for partial effect. This can look really cool.

14. This is a big one: access to each variable via formula, so for example there would be a code for "limit z min", then view z could be "limit z min + 1", so the view will always be 1 from the z limit plane (this is a basic time saving example but the possibilities are infinite). Then we could also use math functions. Formulae could be used with the sound tab on a very old version, though the sound render function never worked for me. I'd be eager to see it implemented, by the by.

15. Render queue. Run list of full setting files with all details (image file type! Argh!!) and file locations, in sequence. Then I can get lots of smaller animations done overnight.

16. Interior mode at iteration x. And be animated. I had a dream that I rendered an animation that showed each iteration in sequence. It was cool.

17. Sperical limits. Inverse box limits. Inverse sphere limits. Change limit plane angle.

18. Option to only show finished image, so render window is screensaver, or to just stare at as I often do :-)

19. Negative palette speed. Disappeared somewhere along the line? It was fun to animate from positive to negative palette value.

20. Keyboard shortcut to start and stop render. I still hit the space bar all the time feeling like it will do something.

21. Sound animation again. Yes I have to say it again. It looked AWESOME, and was a real tease.

22. Contrast finding algorithm that antialiases areas that are sparkly. Features like this may offer revolutionary render speeds, or maybe I'm derp.

23. Multiple images by iteration count. Every time I can illustrate how a fractal is made, an angel laughs.

24. Option for limits to not apply to primitive shapes.

25. Have transparent colours in palette. Maybe, opposite of interior mode at iteration x? I did think that translucent colours would be cool. Buddhi your avatar image is a classic.

26. Transparency control for image window, then I can overlay multiple instances of the program and preview compositions that I later make in Resolume. Alternatively, does anyone know of an image viewer that will allow transparency control?

27. "Not DE shading mode" only on water or primitives. Maybe my method is at fault but the two shading modes look very different. Not DE looks far nicer on water but takes so long!

28. Parameter for water wave phase position. Currently I find it very difficult to make convincing looped animations with water.

29. Separate glow value for primitive shapes. Hey, why not a whole shader tab for each primitive  ;D

30. Colour by 3D position. Seeing the 3D cursor in the render window gave me so many ideas.

31. I'd also love to see the shape "scanned", lit up at every pixel of a certain x,y, or z value, then as that value shifts the structure will be shown clearly. I currently fake this by animating limits to only show a thin slice scanning through each plane, but this doesn't look the same as all parts of the plane are visible rather than being partially occluded by foreground areas of the shape.

The list is very long but in next releases (starting from 1.21) I will implement some of items. Thanks a lot for many interesting ideas

Some thoughts-

water  with  transparency control, probably difficult if reflection is used as well. Fractal explorer had transparency control for water but from memory no reflection,

Not sure if possible already, but having water horizontal plane same as the camera view.

I like quite a few of the ideas on Joe's list, but this is the one that really stands out for me.

This would be a very cool thing to have.

For macro/keystroke stuff, along with window positioning, I've been using AutoIt.
http://www.autoitscript.com/site/autoit/
It's not 100% ideal, but it does most of what I need it to do extremely well.

Please not! Imagine you try to simulate a realistic flight curve with camera rotation!

But an up-vector like for the plane would be nice...

oops, I should have been clearer,  I was suggesting it as an option that you could choose for static images :)

32. Bring back minimum iteration setting so I can do this:
(http://orig04.deviantart.net/93a1/f/2015/349/8/9/fireball_starr_sm_by_juice_if-d9k7jrk.jpg)
but with the Fresnel thing too. Hypercomplex julia with minimum and maximum iteration count 800.

33. Fullscreen mode. Screensaver mode.

I had a bit of a break this year but I'm getting back into surfing now and then. Thanks again for all your great work.

Wow! excellent artwork.

34. Extra render window for m-set that I can click on to collect julia coordinates. At the moment I have to use an old version to gather many coordinates as the new one renders a new julia image with every click. I guess I could just have two copies of the software open but copy/paste between programs isn't as easy as it was with v1.2x.

35. Calculation tool for prints... this one is a simple concept but hard to explain. I want a tool for making sure my images have correct perspective for the final print size and viewing distance. Including stereoscopic images. So I can enter values for the size of the print and the viewing distance, and the distance between eyes and field of view will be corrected. It should appear that the print is either a window to look through at part of a shape, or the whole shape is on top of the print. It is my goal to make prints designed around the gallery space, with lighting in the fractal scene matching the gallery lighting, and perspective matching the intended viewing point.

34). Assuming I understand what you are after.

Mouse click function - get point coordinates

Click on your Julia point and in the Measurement dock - right click on coordinates and copy vector to clipboard.

I also want to be able to preview the julia set without clearing the m-set render. Should I just use two instances of the program?

Now I understand your point. It's something doable. I can create preview in the same tab as Julia constant is (with no effects, lights, just to show the shape). 
Just to define your requirements, do you want have preview of whole fractal with center of view at [0,0,0] and adjustable zoom?

very nice wish this one  ..simple like the ultra fractal julia switch/search , a little pop up window that shows it. . I do need to work some more with mandelbulber.. features like this make exploration much more fun. :)

This preview will be in 2.09. Today I have implemented it.

fantastic ..exactly what I envisioned : )

Hahaha this is the opposite to what I was thinking, but it works.
I was imagining the preview would be of the m-set, which you would send over from the main window or load from settings file or clipboard. Usually when I'm morphing julia by keyframe the coordinates come from a small section so view control is needed. But with keyframes for shape parameters the preview has to be re-rendered... confusing.
Once loaded in the preview window you can click on that m-set to render julias in the main window. That way you can watch your julia scene morph with lights and camera animation keyframes.

Here is where increase in reflection depth would help - image link (http://nocache-nocookies.digitalgott.com/gallery/19/9484_22_09_16_4_08_35.jpeg)

It was very easy solution to implement that's why I have decided to do this in this way. But in Mandelbulber 2.10 I can think about opposite option.

I would just like to support Joe's number 1 suggestion: selective render in the render window. I make mainly very large single image renders and find myself spending alot of time tweaking the image, it would save alot of time if I could view my render at 100% percent and then just select a portion of it to re-render. Assuming this is what you meant Joe ?

Yes smurfboard that's what I meant.

And the julia window was number 6 and number 34! It works well, slightly higher res or antialiasing might help.

Could the main image be centred in the window? So if it was too small it would have an even border.
(http://nocache-nocookies.digitalgott.com/gallery/19/9484_15_11_16_1_33_43.jpeg)

36. Turn off tool tips. Big white box popping up over my dark images in a dark window and wrecking my night vision over and over.

37. Render julia preview with openCL. Option to preview m-set instead.

38. Failing that, an option to disable julia preview. Also it doesn't disable during animation render which slows things right down unless you go to another tab.

39. MIDI or OSC control to allow parameter assign to controller. Take me to continuous rotary heaven! Scrolling is great but I want to be able to assign permanent controls for some parameters and be able to tweak several things at once. Will need scaling or even formula control. FL Studio is a music production program that has fantastic connectivity in this way.

40. Zoom render window to same position. Currently moves the render view when zoom is changed.

41. Move cursor not change typing context pleeeease. I still have the habit of moving the cursor out of the way so I can see what I'm typing, which removes the typing context and I have to click the field again.

42. Option to bounce playback in animation preview, so it plays back and forth.

43. Zoom function for animation preview - mostly I want to be able to view at 100% to avoid scaling artifacts.

44. Choice of scroll wheel factor per parameter. Sub menu in right click menu maybe.

45. Julia per hybrid slot? I might be showing my ignorance of how Julia sets actually work, but if I'm on to something here I'm sure you can see the potential.

46. MaxIter per boolean. Probably requires rewrite of render engine.

47. Volumetric tab per boolean

48. Lens tilt simulation for offset perspective in compositions. Currently I just render too big and crop one side.

49. Render SSAO on stop button, so a render doesn't have to be completed in order to see SSAO.

50. Option for iteration fog and glow not limited by limits. At the moment there are artifacts when glow or fog are sliced. Plus it would be amazing to watch a slice of solid scan through an iteration fog shape!

51. Envelope editor for parameters. This is another function that is the norm with many other programs. Resolume 6 now has envelope editing and it is years and years overdue, and gives the software a whole new range of possibilities.

52. Render visible only. Maybe this is possible now that openCL renders by blocks?

<3

some notes:

36) I know what you mean. But so far a QT solution has not been found.


45) it is there in boolean mode, but you have to get the vector coords with Get Point Coordinates, then Paste Vector them in to the Julia part.  Julia is grabbing a single points coordinates from the m-set, and then adding them to the formula without adding original point,. m-set =  "group of transforms" + Cpixel orig. point, then j-set =  "group of transforms" + julia coordinate from m-set. So julia is just a nice fast addition, so "transform addition constant" does the same thing,  and in some formula s "offset" does the same thing.

46) This is needed. In fact in boolean mode, ideally there would be all controls e.g   4D add w,  some DE controls.


50) Yep, and there are a few other fog type enhancements to implement that could be really cool.

as always, thanks Joe for providing necessary feed back O0 O0 O0