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Hi

Today was released new version of my Mandelbulber v0.11 program for Linux.

features:

• Five 3D fractal formulas: trig with analytic DE, trig with delta DE, not-trig power 2, hypercomplex power 2, quternionic power 2. All can be rendered in Julia mode.
• Two threshold modes: estimated distance threshold, iteration count threshold
• Dynamic detail level depended on pixel deepness.
• Advanced shading: hard shadows, specular lighting, angle of light incidence, ambient occlusion (based on orbit traps and many coloured rays), glow effect, environment mapping
• Saving images to JPEG format (quality 100%)
• Possible to load and save fractal settings in .txt file
• 3D Navigator tool - rotating and going forward to distance according to DE
• Program uses all CPU cores. In x64 version there is possible to render images in unlimited resolution (only limitation is amount of RAM)
• Nice GUI (requires GTK+2.0)

This is still alpha version and I know that there is lot's of bugs.

Download binary and source:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/mandelbulber/

Example images:
http://krzysztofmarczak.deviantart.com/gallery/

Hello,

The program works now.
I compiled it on a laptop that has Ubuntu 9.10.

I can use the binary on Slackware also.

It still won't compile on the Slackware computer because it's not linking the jpeg library.  I'll try to figure that out yet.

Thank you.  It's a very interesting software.

Hi

I have just released version 0.20 of Mandelbulber program for Linux

Download binary and source:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mandelbulber/

new features:

• Menger Sponge and Tglad's Mandelbox formulas
• simple animation mode - recording flight path
• textured background - spherical wrapped bitmap
• gradient background

fixed bugs:

• fixed some memory leaks
• moved files with arrow icons to .mandelbulber/icons directory

other changes:

• reorganize structure of directories in .mandelbulb directory

Example images:
http://krzysztofmarczak.deviantart.com/gallery/

Hi

Great soft, thanks for it.
I managed to port it to windows (eclipse project, built with mingw), so if anyone's interested I can share the binaries somehow or write a small how to (there were practically no changes of the original code from Buddhi to make it compatible).

@makemeunsee, I will be very grateful if you help me in porting it to Windows. I tried but always I had problems with linking. If you compile this it will work without minigw?

Yes there were some linking problem, you need to have the jpeg, iconv and gtk libs and I had to manually configure them all.
I'm not sure what you're asking, you mean if the binaries I compiled can be run natively from windows ?
If so, yes, I have a .exe file, which depends a few DLLs, but it can be packed easily (the whole lot is around 15MB, gtk+ dlls are quite large and exe files produced with mingw seem rather big too).

If you could share the windows binaries that would be absolutely great. ;D

As no one picked up on this offer (incredible), this prompted me to register just for that, cheers.

@ blob
no worries, the case is not forgotten :) I've sent the bins to Buddhi, he may be testing them but I guess they'll be available really soon on sourceforge.

@makemeunsee, thank you for windows port. You made great work!
Windows version was tested on Windows XP and Vista (64-bit) and works properly and stable. Package for Windows was released on sourceforge.net. It includes all necessary DLL files.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mandelbulber/
Please download and try
Before first run you have to execute install.bat script

note: we have to optimise Windows version because it works slower than Linux version

wow, great thank you very much for the windows port !  O0 O0 O0

Yes, thank you Buddhi and makemeunsee. I'm so used to UF that I will need to adapt to the missing Undo button :D

Great, after a bit of fiddling I have been able to run the bugger on my Windows ME machine.

In case anyone's interested here is how to do it:

1) The latest KernelEx compatibility layer must be installed and the the mandelbulber executable must be put in Windows 2000 SP4 compatibilty mode through the properties.

2) The libgio-2.0-0.dll must be replaced by the one from Gimp 2.6.7 as this one has an unresolved dependency in dnsapi.dll KernelEx does not cater for.

3) The .mandelbulb directory must be put in a directory called (NULL) (Including brackets) itself located in the executable directory.

That's it and it runs great. Cheers, thanks everyone.  ;D

PS : (off topic) @makemeunsee

Do you think you could port Gnofract 4D to Windows as you've done for this one? It's also a GTK app and it seems it is quite nice but no one ever ported it to Windows unfortunately.

Thank you for interest. Unfortunatelly I found many bugs in Windows version (it is not makemeunsee fault but mine :). It is my first multiplatform application and I have to learn differences between Windows and Linux behavior.
- ambient occlusion based on many rays is not working (maybe program is not loading lightmap texture)
- reflections generates some strange artifacts (mayby there is also problem with envmap texture)
- after stopping rendering, refreshing image in window is not working
I think there is some problem with different behavior in using some variable types (e.g. JSAMPLE, guchar)
I will try to fix this problems as fast as it is possible.

I'm glad you lot enjoy this!
I'll keep on landing a hand to Buddhi to improve the windows version, so he can focus on adding more features :)
@blob: from what I can see, there's an ongoing effort to port Gnofract 4D to windows, but it's really on another complexity scale than Mandelbulber portage (hint: mandelbulber code is several weeks old, and a few thousands lines long; gnofract is several years old...)

@makemeunsee
Thanks for your proposal of cooperating. As you wrote I will focus on Linux version and prepare code to easier adapt for Windows porting (according to your hints). You will compile and optimise all next versions for Windows. In that way we can build more stable and more optimised binaries for both systems.
If you decide to change GTK+ interface to some other environment more friendly for Windows, of course I will agree.
Now I have to fix some bugs, improve animation mode, add some colouring algorithms, make some user guide, and.... lots of other things.

Thanks so much to Buddhi for creating the Mandelbulber and to makemeunsee for compiling it for Windows. The Mandelbulber is a joy to use, (I stayed up most of the night playing with it) and the source code is very clean & instructive. Although I've had some small previous experience with Qt, GTK+ seems to be quite straightforward in comparison. Can't wait for the updates!

Hi

I have just released version 0.21 of Mandelbulber program for Linux (for Windows should be also in few days)

Download binary and source:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mandelbulber/

new features:

    * added tool-tips for each button and edit field
    * added fractal colouring algorithm
    * added "sphere" formula for testing shaders
   
fixed bugs:

    * fixed bug with hanging refreshing of image in window after using Stop button
    * fixed loading textures for envmaps and lightmaps (on Windows caused some strange artifacts on image - to checked by makemeunsee)
    * fixed problem with wrong rendering time calculation on Windows (thanks to makemeunsee)

other changes:

    * optimised conditions in CalculateInterations() function (10% faster)
    * optimised calculation of Tglad's formula (15% faster)
    * some little changes in GUI

Now there is also Mandelbulber 0.21 for Windows. Thanks to makemeunsee.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mandelbulber/

If something needs to be fixed or improve please let me know.

Great, thanks.

I have spotted a few typos on the interface that you may want to correct in a future version:

Fractal forlula (formula)
Textured backgruond (background)
Coloring radnom (random) seed
calculation of analityc (analytic) DE
Backgrond (Background) color 1

Cheers.

Hi

Because there are some questions how to render animations using my program, I prepared some short manual how to do this:

1. Prepare starting view-point. You can click "Init 3D Navigator", then the camera will move to the default starting position. You can also put your own camera coordinates and angle, set "perspective" to around 1.5 and "Close up (zoom)" to very low value (e.g 1e-6). You can also decide how fast flight will be. It is adjustable by the "Flight speed (DE multiplier). Camera speed is proportional to estimated distance to the fractal surface.
2. Set up very low image resolution (e.g. 160x120) and "Scale in window" to higher value (e.g. 4). Because my programs offers high quality of images instead of calculation speed it will be faster to record flight track in low resolution.
3. Click "Record path" and navigate camera by mouse movement inside render window. Your flight track is recorded in "paths/path.txt: file (in default) and low-res stills are recorded in "images/imageXXXX.jpg" files
4. When the flight path is ready, set-up requested resolution of animation (e.g. 1280x720) and other quality parameters
5. Set up image stills destination path by "Select file paths / destination image sequence". This folder should be empty.
6. Save actual setting by "Save settings". It will be helpful when you will want to continue rendering animation after stop.
7. Click "Render animation". Animation is now rendering according to camera coordinates saved in path.txt file.
If you want to continue rendering animation which you started before (e.g. after some power failure), please load proper settings file and just click on "Render animation". Program will scan which frames are already rendered and render all missed frames.

I moved this topic to the right place in forum
http://www.fractalforums.com/mandelbulb-software/mandelbulber-open-source-program-for-rendering-high-quality-mandelbulbs/

New Mandelbulber has been just released!

Great program Buddhi, thanks for open-sourcing it. Just some minor criticisms at the moment: I found the release naming convention a little confusing - I wasn't sure if I was getting source or binaries but the package contained both and I built it from source after reading the README. At the moment I'm stumbling around in it. It's currently running on a 64bit Gentoo testing install. Nice :-)