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I wanted to try some ideas from this video - https://youtu.be/0bWCvUHz-FA but it occurred to me that there is no choice for 'Mandelbulb 1' or 'Mandelbulb 2" or 3. Same with Menger - Menger 3 is there, but no '1' or '2' in the formula list for v1.9. Where are they? These seem like stock formulas which should be there by default - or, what am I doing wrong?

Thanks for any help, -Mark

  Hi Mark, welcome to the forums!  

   Mandelbulb 3d opens up with a stock Mandelbulb selected (it's the default Integer Power bulb).  You could also try out "General" in the formulas tab for another form of the stock bulb.

MengerIFS blends well with other fractals, and it is a stock Menger as well.  



  I'd recommend watching a few of the videos in this thread to get a feel for how to use M3D (if you're unfamiliar with it):

http://www.fractalforums.com/tutorials/mandelbulb3d-tutorial-list/

  And look around for Christian's excellent ChaosTube series to get a few ideas.  Christian creates fun and educational videos (probably have to have him teach classes to kids at some point). 

Thanks! Yes, still a bit new to the software, but dabbling in fractal geometry for over 20 years.

I got my answer, but it is a bit confusing to know 'Integer Power' is actually name of the formula for the base MandelBULB. That's a bit confusing for newcomers.

The number following 'Mandelbulb' is the weight - or in other words - the iteration count. So the 'Menger3' in the formulas list is a standard Menger Sponge with 3 iterations.

Loving MB3D and looking forward to geeking out with you all.  :dink:

@soltec no it is not the iteration count, generally the numbers stand for the exponents, the name "Integer Power" is due to a slight speed increase when using integer numbers as power values (1,2,3,4...) opposed to non integer numbers 1.2, 1.3, 6.9 ... the mandelbulb is the 3d companion of the 2d mandelbrot, the standard mandelbrot uses a power2 in its z^2+c formula, z^3+c is exponent 3, the higher the exponent the more bulbs you get, its a parameter for the particular formula in the menger formula the number corresponds to some other parameter, menger3 is the "standard" menger with a cube divided into 9 smaller cubes and cutted out the center cubes, this is then repeated for every iteration this process can theoretically go on forever where the volume of an object vanished but becomes an unlimited surface area, a little hard to explain all of the stuff in a few lines and i hope to help you out a bit

@mbenesi thank you for the kind words, let me link 2 videos that explain what is going on when calculating a fractal

as a starter:

this is a visualisation of the calculation process of the mandelbrot^2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce0lms78nt4

and here i tried to explain how the mandelbox is calculated ;) the process is the same as for the mandelbrot and the resulting image is obtained the same way as in the previous video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yeANz-sxWA

Fantastiche! Very helpful info Christian. It's very much appreciated.

I've already stumbled onto your channel looking for tutorials, but just recently. I look forward to checking them all out eventually.

Tschüss!  ;D