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Dearest,
I am a complete newbie and I wonder ; how come a 3d obj file created with Mandelbulb 3d and Fiji look like sprayed with a foam after imported into Meshlab (SEE ATTACHEMENT), how can this be? I mean, in Mandelbulb 3d the fractal has f.e. straight clean corners/boxes after rendering in Mandelbulb, in FIJI it looks tight as well but after loading in Meshlab the .obj file has a bubble foam appearance. Can these be flattened? When I try this with Sculptris Sculptris gives me an error message during importing the fractal .obj file ; ' too many triangles connected to an edge (max 2) . Can I modify the .obj in Meshlab so Sculptris does import the obj file? Cos then I could try to ' flatten' the surfaces of the .obj. Or is it that any  values in Mandelbulb 3d need to changed to get almost the exact result as the 3d fractal looks like in ~Mandelbulb 3d?

Many thanks in advance for answering

kind regards

Hello and welcome to the forums   O0

The obj export is a feature that is ahead of it's time technologically!

To get the details sharper you need bigger voxel stacks, and that means prohibitively huge obj files (dozens of gigabytes!).

Getting it fine tuned is an art that is dependent on your hardware and software.

People get best results with monster machines using huge amounts of RAM and able to handle files of several GB with no difficulty.

The best results I have seen came from ZBrush, which is a pricey program, but in this case you really do get what you pay for!

The best approach is to use low poly obj files with high resolution bump and displacement maps, but that feature has yet to be implemented anywhere I have seen.

Meshlab's decimation tools help reduce file size, but reduce details in the process.

Give it a decade or two and we'll be able to handle these files a lot better!

Until then, just find the settings that work best within your system's limits and don't do extreme close up renders. 

Hope that helps!

Here's one of the better results I got using obj files in Carrara:

(http://nocache-nocookies.digitalgott.com/gallery/9/162_01_01_12_3_55_26.jpeg)

Why not to use the internal mesh-generator? Is more sophisticated than the use of voxelstacks, is much faster and has preview

Wow, thank you for sobering me up :) / :( Haahaa. 

Ok, I'll just work with what ~I got and am able to work with .

Thanks for the reply

cheers

Please help me here, the internal mesh generator in Mandelbulb 3d? OK,

I'll check it out , thanks.

kr

That is called "Bulb Tracer" and I think it is under the "Tools" tab, but I am at work and can't confirm at the moment...

It's a nice feature, but I never worked too much with it as it was a recent addition and haven't made an obj file for a while.

I am using a Mac and this feature I cannot find on the Mandelbulb 3d I use ( 1.9) As far as I believe the ' new'  Mandelbulb 3d is 1.9.9 and is not available ?

It's highlighted in the attached image.

I think the mac wrapper guy never did do the later versions, but am unsure, however; MB3D runs fine under WINE.  Or at least it did when I had a mac...

Hope that helps.

meshlab is great , i keep the source on my box for remeshing point clouds
but the viewer is right out of the 1990's  and motif

even on my 5+ year old i5 with 8 gig ram and a older legacy support nvidia card Blender ( and meshlab) can work on a 2 gig mesh
-- a bit slowly , but usable .

you might want to see what the obj looks like in blender
a comparison using StructurSynth 
blender then meshlab
(http://7.t.imgbox.com/WL0St3Mk.jpg) (http://imgbox.com/WL0St3Mk) (http://9.t.imgbox.com/0BYB9UwZ.jpg) (http://imgbox.com/0BYB9UwZ) (http://3.t.imgbox.com/iGsxS0W3.jpg) (http://imgbox.com/iGsxS0W3) (http://6.t.imgbox.com/fMzrmltP.jpg) (http://imgbox.com/fMzrmltP)

Nah, :( , no Mac version with that feature....     :(

I never use(d) Blender ever, the app makes me nervous, too intimidating, I'll have to search for even the most simple standard functions, horrible app.
I simply don't have the time and not even the commitment to learn to work with that monster... :(

STructurSynth? What? Where? How?

I guess you can understand what I mean
:(

Works fine with WINE

Where and how can I download 1.9.1 working for Mac then? I downloaded it and it here  http://www.macworld.co.uk/download/system-desktop-tools/mandelbulb-3d-191-3330413/#downloadInfo , and it is NOT 1.9.1. but 1.9 , the one I have already installed on my MAC

You can't download a "version for mac" since it doesn't exist, but you can get WINE (a windows emulator, despite their claims tht it isn't!)  (either way, it is a framework for running windows software natively on a mac without installing windows!).

I don't have a link (posting from work again) but WINE is a common item for mac users and should be easy to find.

Install that, then you can run not just MB3D, but many, many, other windows programs too!

A worthwhile tool to have.

more or less this site is stealing the download file from our site, it is in no way an official download, the official download is solely from our site:
http://www.fractalforums.com/index.php?action=downloads;cat=5

1.9.1 can be found here:
http://www.fractalforums.com/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=64

the file you download from our site is garanteed to not be modified, usually those sites stel files from others and contain them in some format they want, it is just crap they put outside the file (in some cases ) the original is the direct download found here on this site

Well , I tried it all out ; wine / winebottler but the 191 version only shows about 6 ' formula's' in the formula window instead of the complete sets. Also , after ' generating mesh'  I see the progress bar reaching about 95% or so and a warning message shows up ; ' E/A fehler 103 , or something.

Either way Wine sucks or 191!! Any suggestions?

what version of WINE are you using???
the current 1.9.19  or 1.8.4

or some other old version ?

also WINE will only run maybe 70% of Microsoft programs
things that use the Microsoft patented and copyrighted Dot Net C#  are notorious for not working

I gave up on macs when osx 10.7 broke most of my programs!

So I last used it on 10.6 and anything newer will require somebody else to answer your questions.  But I assure you I never had any issues using whatever was the current version of WINE when 10.6 was the new mac OS.

Bear in mind, however, that you are trying to get a windows program to run on mac.  Problems are to be expected, and to get it working may never be easy.

My advice is to find a native mac program for this since apple's next OS update could well break everything and they'll blame programmers rather than own up and admit they did it (just like when 10.7 broke even adobe's photoshop!).

Sorry I don't have a better answer, but it's best to be aware of what you are getting into before bad things happen and you become disappointed.

I believe Terry Gintz's "Mystic Fractal" series of programs run fine on a mac and feature direct obj export - but 10.6 was a few years ago and I am no longer aware of any current trends regarding this topic on a mac.

My advice will not go over well, but if you want to run MB3D the best thing you can do is get a used windows computer!  They can be had cheaply and you can download software to a usb drive and transfer.  You never need to put the windows machine online if it's a dedicated rig just for Art!

Turning off themes in MB3D can also sometimes help to make it run more smooth, probably even more on those kind of "emulators"

Dearest, I went back to windows 10 pro , 64 bit on a I3 core with 4 g memory and a ssd drive.

Now I get the error message most of the time at the end of generating a mesh ; E/A fehler 103

what is going on here??

Anyone knowing a solution to this?

cheers

Maybe it does not like the space-character in the file name? (Just a guess and I have no cance to try it out now)

Hi.
ihmo you have not enough ram (or virtual) memory, set oversamplig off or clean drive C:.
br.

The error says, the file can not be written. Did you try to select another file/folder where you have write-access? The filename displayed is just the default name, it can be changed by clikcing at the button on the left to the filename (or changed by typing another one)

No , the folders , save+read, have no restrictions. However, I redirected some directory paths on the Mandelbulb 3d 191 settings and the error pop up comes far less. I guess it is indeed RAM usages. SOme small renders look OK but still no way near the 2d image result. Where can I find tuts on the Mandelbulb 191 configurations ( what does what do? I mean , how to set up taubin smooth, what is surface iso value and what can be done with these settings etc, etc. )

cheers

I'm not aware about tutorials, but here is some material describing both the algorithms involved and the properties:

Iso-Value in Marching Cubes algorithm: http://paulbourke.net/geometry/polygonise/ (http://paulbourke.net/geometry/polygonise/)
Taubin-Smooth: https://graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs468-01-fall/Papers/taubin-smoothing.pdf (https://graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs468-01-fall/Papers/taubin-smoothing.pdf)

Cheers!

wuuuhhh, this is above my head, aahah. But many thanks ofcorse :) I'll search so more on what and how the config of the Mandelbulb 3d 191 application does.

kr

Peter

The default values should work good in most cases, otherwise just play with them. The iso-value actually influences shape of the mesh, while Taubin-rerlated options only affect the (optional) smoothing process