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Hi all, I just had to post this - it makes me realise that I really, really, really need to get a faster system, I'm assuming this is using my UF formula :)

Video by http://www.fractalforums.com/profile/bib/ (http://www.fractalforums.com/profile/bib/)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YvOxY03HdY (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YvOxY03HdY)

It is pretty mindblowing. I couldn't help but watch it repeatedly. Must have seen it around 30x so far ;)

Excellent variety of camera speeds and places to zoom in to.

Hi!

First of all, happy new year 2010!

Of course Dave I'm using your formula. You know, considering the amount of time you spend on fractals, you should find a way to invest say £750 in a new machine. It changed my fractaler's life :)

The problem is that it's never fast enough. This video took 3 or 4 days to render, and I am considering buying a 2nd machine to boost rendering speed.

@twinbee: I must admit the places where I zoom are found by a trial and error process where random plays a significant role, as well as some experimental knowledge of the Mandebulb structures. I am fortunate because I use UF and a last generation PC, so the preview is displayed quite quickly. Now I wonder what if UF could use the GPU.

When I design a video, I try to find a balance between passing by areas to give this famous perspective effect, and zooming into more details. So far, apart my tower zoom and this one, I haven't seen many videos that show seriously "deep" fractal zoom in the Mandelbulb. "deep" is relative of course...(not comparable with a 2D deep zoom)

It's no mater how fast computers we have. When I started with fractal I had Amiga 600 with Motorola 68000 7MHz CPU and 1MB RAM. On this computer I rendered some Mandelbrot fractals and I was very happy when I saw these wonderful shapes after many hours of rendering. This computer was too slow. Next I bought Amiga 1200 and I rendered deeper zooms of fractals. This computer was still too slow. Few years later I bought Blizzard PowerPC card for my Amiga (CPU: PowerPC 160MHz, 64MB RAM). This computer was really enough for render Mandelbrot fractals but I started with rendering animations.  This computer was still too slow. Next I bought my first PC class computer with Celeron 450MHz CPU. I could render animations but resolution 320x240 was to small and I wanted animations in higher resolution.  This computer was still too slow.. Next I had PC with Athlon 2500 XP. At the beginning I was very happy when I saw how fast it can render fractal zoom animations. "Unfortunately" I bought 22'' LCD monitor and I wanted to render animations in HD resolution (1680x1050). This computer was still too slow. Now I have Intel Core Quad 8200 but I started with 3D fractals. And what? This computer is still toO slow. Conclusion: THERE IS NO ENOUGH FAST COMPUTERS

:D ;D :( ??? ::) :P :-X :-\ :'(

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010!!!

Ah, so it took that long :)
I was over-estimating your processing power ;)
In that case what I actually need is more time and patience !
I maybe need to spend more time rendering and less time tweaking the formulas.

It would be interesting to see exactly the same render done using the updated formula I sent you (i.e. using the dynamic solid threshold) since that should stop the gross aliasing in the background (though it may spoil the depth effect a little).

Yes! But I could try to optimise all parameters, because I notice that sometimes tweaking parameters does not affect quality while reducing render time.

I will try your latest formula on the one I am designing right now.

Bah, you should have told me this some days ago  :D , I just added a second ATI 5850 card to my system, and just finished rewriting my renderer to use both cards. The current setup is almost fast enough, I have nice framerates in my preview view. Not sure what to do next, I could to a total rewrite and use doubles. Or maybe make add your glow effect for a more infernal video. I have been thinking about adding 3D procedural textures to the MB, but that would be cheating ?
 

I just understood how to use the Distance adjustment parameter. I stupidly left it to 0, thus calculating tons of useless details in the background. I estimate it could calculate at least 4 times quicker with a correct setting.

And here comes the latest one. The goal was to optimize render speed while not deteriorating quality too much. The result is a zoom of "order 10": the latest minibulbs are 10 generations smaller than the main one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9hlGQmdz6o

Great video again. A few questions:
What is happening at the beginning before you dive in, when it turns inside out? Is this an exponent morph?
Your videos often have the level of detail increasing as you get deeper. Is this just the number of iterations increasing? What kind of function controls the iteration count? What is it at by the end of this video?

>> No, I just change start value from i to 0


>> No, the number of iterations does not change. Instead I'm using a parameter called Solid Threshold in Dave Makin's formula. Alternatively I also use the "fast render" parameter in the last WIP version to give the "uniterated" effect, the advantage is that it is smoother and does not make a kind of layers' effect.


>> None. I control the Solid Threshold mostly by "hand" on some keyframes, and Ultrafractal does the interpolation...until I discovered the "Distance adjustment" parameter that does part of the job automatically as far as I understand.


>> Mainly a drop of the parameter "Accuracy" from 2 to 0, but an increase in the solid threshold as well, and other parameters that reduce the quality (and boost the render time!)

Sorry if my explanations are too simple, I'm just a basic user of Ultrafractal and Dave Makin's formula in this case.

here is an image approximately taken from the same animation, with a much finer quality (10mn render time):

(http://www.fractalforums.com/gallery/1/492_03_01_10_8_31_06.jpg)