Welcome to Fractal Forums

It's me again! ... So I've been having a great time since realising that through combining different formulae, results can be extraordinary.

While navigating my new found formulas combos, I've often wished to be able to "roll" the image up/down, or to the sides. At the moment it can only roll the x/y plane around the z-axis. Jesse, any way you could implement rolling the x/z plane around the y axis, and the y/z plane around the x axis? :D ... Would be nice.

Not sure if I understand you correctly, but you can turn the bulb around every axis with the arrow keys in the main window. In the navigator it's somewhat more difficult and you will need to combine sliding, rolling and zooming. Changing the default numbers (down arrow in the navigator window) can help you in moving faster or more accurately. If you're stuck, checking "fixed zoom and steps" can help, but don't forget to uncheck it afterwards... Hope this helps

Madman's right, you can turn these things every which way but loose in the main window, including by fractions of degrees.

Aha, forgot all about those buttons down there in the main window! Thank you. But still, wouldn't it be nice if we could rotate it "live" like that in the Navigator? You know... Keeping all the navigating functions in one place.

And maybe you guys could help me out with this: I'm writing a tutorial for beginners for M3D (via my blog), but not sure how to explain the "sliding" buttons. "Looking", I've said, is like turning your head left or right, literally "looking around at" the fractal. But what does sliding do? It seems to me it's almost like sidestepping one direction and looking (just a little) in the opposite direction. (in fact I'll use this in my blog for now until someone gives me a better definition :) )

Looking is actually Sliding the image across or up and down the screen, the deeper the zoom there is also a slight rotation of  the scene in the direction of movement.  
Sliding is more like "looking" as there is a shift in focus due to rotation and the image moves across the screen with the rotation from side to side and up and down.

One thing you might want to mention early on in the tut is that unlike most all other 3D apps like, Maya, Terragen, Daz products, Poser, MoJoworld etc. The Camera NEVER moves, the object you are looking at is Moved around in front of the Camera. Once that is set in your mind the rest pretty much makes sense.

Hmm.. Excuse my audacity lenord (I'm still such a newbie), but I'm pretty sure you're wrong about this? ... Because I set the looking angle to 90 degrees, and then zoomed into an appropriate area on the Mandelbulb and looked left and right, to test it out. This is what I got :

(http://nocache-nocookies.digitalgott.com/gallery/7/5015_27_06_11_2_24_14.jpeg)

So yeah, it really looks to me like in the case of Looking, the camera angle actually changes(?)

I still don't quite get Sliding, though I'm using it with more ease now. Combining looking and sliding helps to rotate the 'bulb whichever way I like (with intermittent shifting to get the image back in front of me,, using the mouse(clicking on the screen once and moving it)).

It will only do it that way when you are way zommed out looking at a complete Bulb/Box. On deep zooms, way inside it will not react that way so it's an incorrect assumption to say it will act that way in all circumstances. There are situations on Deep Zooms where I've seen the  Looking and Sliding functions switch appearent Operations even. How much Sliding(rotation) and Looking(Shifting) are directly tied to Ammount of Zoom, overall orientation of the Bulb/Box, Zmid and Zend, everything is interactive when moving a Bulb/Box around.

You haven't looked left or right, you have shifted the image from zero and shifted/slid it right or left by 90 degrees

OK, I'm confusing myself now, I generally never use the Nav until I'm zoomed quite a bit to start with. If you take an Abox, center it in the nav, then play with Looking and Sliding, Looking is rotation by the amount entered, sliding shifts position by the amount entered. When you get zoomed in(200-2000 whatever) things change differently, sliding has a more rotational effect and looking has more of a positional effect, yeah...that works for me anyway.

I see :) ... Ok awesome, thank you for mentioning this. :beer: I'll play around a bit more, try different things at different zooms, and advise further in another blogpost entitled "More about navigation".

Just a small comment to confuse the issue even more :). If you navigate with the buttons in the main menu, you'll rotate the bulb. Leftclick turns around the middle of the viewport, while rightclick turns around the absolute axes (Hover over the buttons to get this info. Hovering is actually a very good way to find out more about buttons and dials in M3D).

However in the navigator, you do change the camera. Looking is indeed what it says: you keep the same position and move your head up/down/left/right. You can easily check this by selecting a value of 180 and click twice on the same button: you'll be where you started. Sliding keeps your eyes locked in position, but you're sidestepping (or moving up or down). Walking is the again, what it says, you can walk into the fractal or step back. This can also be achieved in the main window by a combination of Zmin and Zoom, but that's a lot less intuitive.

But... (of course, there's always a snag...): The navigator behaves a bit erratically, if you're partially in the fractal. A tell tale of such a circumstance is when the main window and the navigator show completely different pictures, or if the main window show even green area's with a sharp border. An easy way around this, is cutting the fractal on the right axis (which would be the axis perpendicular to your monitor).

I've never noticed lenord's experience at high zooms (everything keeps working as it should), but I think that len usually uses high FOV's so that may be connected to it.

So I thanked you already in the other thread but here's another: Thanks! : :beer:

This really really helps. So now for my inevitable questions:

About the erratic behaviour when you're partially inside the bulb: I've found that sometimes if I've walked in quite far, when I try and walk out (especially when using the mouse-wheel instead of the w/s buttons) the zoom actually increases. Why/how?? You can see this demonstrated on your side by looking for any little hole in the 'bulb to dive down, and try climb out of it again  :tongue1:
Also, when using the mouse wheel, when the pointer is not near the center of the navigator screen, the entire bulb rotates sometimes, especially when walking out.
Oh and, you know when you click on the screen, the pointer disappears, and you can move the image around? What is that doing exactly? I often think I know but then something different happens.

Lastly, two short but powerful questions. What is cutting, and what is FOV?  ;D .. I will try things on my own later (busy with blog right now) but a spoon-fed answer is always nice :P

FoVy is Field of View on the Y-axis(Camera View angle)....Cutting is actually Cutting the entire Bulb/Box along the specified axis by the amount of the number entered

As for the erratic behavior of the nav in some situations Jesse would be the one to get a real explanation from, I chalk it up to difference in formulas, some have analytical DEs some are fixed, a hybrid containing both mess the Nav up some. It's just something you know happens and when it does you're used to it. Usually I toggle to or from Fixed zoom, take a couple steps forward and back, sometimes that syncs things back up, if it doesn't I reinsert params and start again. Personally I never use the Scrool Zoom, too easy to get off track of where you want to go. I manually enter zoom values quite frequently, it's easy to overshoot a spot but you can back up in the nav. I usually get close to where I want to be before opening the Nav at all, use the nav to get the scene set I'm looking for then go back to main for fine rotations since you can do fractions of a degree using the main rotate arrorws.


Flying by mouse in the Nav in MB3D seems to work almost just like Flying in MojoWorld, you fly in the direction the mouse is moved, except MoJo gives ya a crosshair to let you where you're going.

Just as a note the earliest versions of MB3D didn't have a Nav Panel, navigation was done soley by the Zoom/select Zoom button, the Shift XY button and the Rotation arrows in the main window. I still use that method to get close before ever opening the Nav Panel.

Hi folks,

well I just want to add my two pence worth on this.

I rarely used the direction arrows on the main window at first as (d'oh! it took me days to discover) you don't instantly lose what you have into a 'sunset' or something as soon as you press them - you have to re-render again - which was confusing as the navi window was 'instant' - even if it is not always clear where you are going. [[I wonder if a simple wireframe-style thing might help to see where we are and it would use less processor power and be 'instant' too?]].

Anyway, to add more confusion, I too have had the Sliding and Looking kind of reverse roles on me too. Sometimes, they work how you'd expect and other times they work however they feel. (it is sometimes a matter of whether you are moving Your Head, the Object or the Window around it) and I have definitely had it where, the closer in I go with Walking, it comes back at me as if I am pressing the lower button. Sometimes I cannot pull out again at all.

Sometimes, I could do without the structure getting a bulbous, bowing distortion as I use these buttons to rotate around it (which I assume would not happen if using the direction controls in the Main window?). And, yeah, sometimes the Navi bears NO resemblence whatsoever to whatever is in the Main window.

I figure that if I can't master these simple buttons after nearly 2 months, there is something inconsistent about them - the only other answer is I'm more demented than I thougt I was.

Still engrossing fun tho innit.

Kam

If a wireframe were easy, I'd have my obj file export!   :gum:  Try the "calc" button for a quick and blocky render in the main window.

I never used the arrow buttons in the main window much either, until I set it to 90 degrees!  Now I use it all the time   O0

I very often find something that needs exactly 90 degrees rotation, and it saves having to use the navigator (where I keep the rotation arrows at a much lower value).

The navigator appearance issue really is all down to lighting and far-plane values most of the time  (as always - yes, there are exceptions).  Don't forget that there's a new "save this lighting" button in the navigator panel near the other light control.  It allows you to copy he light set to memory, and paste it into the presets in the main lighting window.

It will need adjustment, but is a welcome starting point.

Hope that helps.

I have been using the Navigator a lot; there are a few simple tricks to use it efficiently.

If - after importing the parameters to the Navigator window by pressing the "Parameter" button - the Navigator does not reflect what has been calculated in the main window, click on the downward button in the Nav window (showing the hint "open/close parameter pane" when hovering with the mouse) to access the Navigator's hidden, additional functionalities and check the box "Fixed zoom and steps". Now, when importing the parameters from the main window, the calculated images should be more or less identical (apart from color and lighting effects). The Nav's behaviour, as far as I know, is caused by an in-built auto pilot that tries to avoid settings which lead to cutting of parts of the fractal object that's being displayed, and it seems to try to do that by zooming in to the objects surface until all the parts that might have been cut by the viewplane come to lie outside (i.e., to the left, right, top or bottom) of the viewplane.

So, I usually keep the "Fixed zoom and steps" box checked when exploring (and stepping through) a fractal. For this purpose, I use the walking and sliding buttons (sometimes adjusting the numbers in the "step" window" to be able to move faster or more cautiously) in conjunction with the little arrow keys that appear beside the zoom factor when "Fixed zoom and steps" is active. However, when I finally want to zoom in somewhere and I do not want the viewplane to cut through any part of the fractal, I have to uncheck this box, of course.

But first, in order to prevent a sudden 'jump' in the image due to the 'autopilot' taking over (after unchecking, when resuming sliding and walking using either the mousewheel or the buttons), I use the zoom arrows to move close to the surface of the fractal object until I think that no parts of the fractal are cut by the viewplane. Then, I export the parameters to the main view ("View to main"; you do not have to press the "Calculate 3D" button yet) just in case I guessed wrong, and only after this, I uncheck the "Fixed zoom and steps" box.

Now, you should be able to navigate freely and you might try to find out how much you can step back now from the surface of the fractal before you hit a fractal 'wall' with your back  ^-^

With this strategy, you can even get inside the tuber- or bulb-like features of some fractals (e.g. http://www.fractalforums.com/gallery/deep-connections/, original parameters from HalTenny, see images and the par file for the indicated tuber's interior below); in order to get out again, however, you have to use the stepping-through possibilities of the "Fixed zoom and steps" option (or, more cumbersome, the cutting options in the main menu).

PS. Hitting a 'wall' when trying to move forward ("Fixed zoom and steps" unchecked) can also occur :banginghead:; this happens when the Navigator's 'autopilot' (distance estimator) increases the zoom factor (in order to avoid cutting the fractal) and the value approaches a certain limit. This limit seems to be defined by the number in the input box beside the "Min distance" button and can be extended as desired by entering increasingly smaller values (e.g. 0.000001).


PPS.

Yes, don't forget to increase the value in the "Far plane" box when the background starts to become visible and the fractal seems to end in front of you ... it's never a good sign when the light at the end of the tunnel is approaching you ...  :evil1: :scared:

Mandelbulb3Dv17{
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Sockratease,

I guess 'If a wireframe were easy', someone far brighter than me wudda come up with it and it would be already implemented (!)
Curiously tho, when I go into the navi, my fans kick in and my cpu goes to 100% for a brief moment - so I don't really understand how is uses less processor. (not really looking for an answer).

Cytotox,
Thanks for the info. It would never occur to tick 'fixed zoom and steps' before pressing parameter button. Subtle differences may make all the difference. Next time I get this issue, I shall try it out - as well as your zoom figures and HalTenny parameters. thanks

kam

I know you weren't looking for an answer, but my immediate reaction was that a faster renderer may use more processor power, not less - but M3D always maxes out the processor, so I dunno...   :evil1:

Opening the Nav actually uses more power because it's another window open and a window that is rendering also, if you open the Nav panel while calculations are still running for the main window for image/shadows whatever now you have 2 renders running. The Nav panel just has faster less accurate resolution is all, as far as CPU usage goes that's a function of the internal settings. When MB3D opens one of the first things it does is check it's environment, if you're running a single/dual core/quad core processor whatever the case may be, then the program sets the CPU Affinity(all cores) for maximum processing power to be allotted to MB3D unless you select otherwise. If you are just running MB3d, use all cores it's faster, if you are rendering in MB3D and want to do other stuff to you need to set the threadcount to use less CPU power for MB3d or everything else is stuck in the Mud.

Excuse me for a little bit off-topic, but having studied the posts attentively I still can't rotate an object around it's center without 'sliding off' from it. In case I need a keyframe I can fix it's position roughly manually but when the frames within the two 'centered' keyframes are rendered the object still moves away and then comes back to the center of the screen, moving along an arc.
Is it really impossible to place the object in the center of the scene so that one shouldn't have adjust every frame manually? Or is there some other way out (that should be I guess!) - ?
Thank You,
Sumato.

Are you using linear interpolation?

Sorry, Sockratease, I haven't  find interpolation settings option in M3D and don't know what interpolation is used :hmh:

Animation defaults to Bezier, but in the case you describe you want linear interpolation  (bezier computes smoother curves between keyframes, and can miss exact keyframes in the name of a smooth curve).

Here:

(http://www.sockrateaze.com/stuff/interp.jpg)

Thank You, Sockratease, it seems to work really!
With kindest regards,
Have a lovely weekend,
Sfumato.