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As if the poor soul isn't probably busy enough, I thought I'd list a couple :hmh: of suggestions for future releases of M3d for Jesse.

Sorry to list so many, I really wouldn't mind if M3d never changed from what it is now (awesome), you will never know how grateful I am (and no doubt everyone else is) for M3d'S existence! If I ever meet you at a future Mandelbulb convention, the drinks are on me! So again sorry to seem demanding and double sorry if any of this functionality curently exists and has escaped my attention!

p.s Maybe there needs to be a sticky thread for this?

• You could perhaps make the top row of material slots into "banks" e.g. 1 - 5  which would give 50 available materials instead of 15?
• Would you be able to 'up' the default threadcount (pretty please)? It defaults to 16, I have to change it to 24 when I launch M3d (which is lots!).. A setup with the dual 10 core ht xeons would need it set to 40 etc...
• Could you make a 'new document' button (I see a space for it right next to save M3i) to reset all parameters (both formula and zoom as well as julia settings, cutting etc) and clear the animation timeline?
• Speaking of the lighting panel could you add a close button to it? I run multiple instances of m3d at times and have accidentally clicked on the wrong instance's lighting parameters. doh!
• Is it possible to add compression (i.e. zip) as an option for m3i files?
• Would it be possible to add a thumbnail 'browser' for M3p and m3i files?
• Could you make all the windows e.g post, formulas, animation 'snap' together like the lighting panel does to the main window? Formulas seems to snap initially but once moved it loses its 'snap'
• Could you make the 3d Navigator window resizable by dragging the edges?
• Another pretty please for transparent pngs or layered tiffs?

ok these ones might be a bit outlandish, but food for thought I guess...

• Could you add some sort of 'minify' mode for rendering animations so that most of the interface dissapears but you can still see a small preview and stats e.g. time rendering, frame number x...
• A 'fractal' cloud generation thingamajig for the background
• A 2d fractal thingamajig for colouring the 3d fractals

Again sorry to list so many and have nothing to really offer in return...

The best algorithm for cloud generation is the perlin noise, perturbed with gnarl/dynamic distorsion :)
Another is the plasma algorithm

I have another suggestion...

Can you please add a button for cooking popcorn while I wait for the rendering process to finish?

Some ideas to achieve this:
- Using the dvd drive laser pointing at the popcorn while simulating a burn process.
- Turning off the cooling fans while rendering and putting the popcorn inside the computer case.

:rotfl:

this was what i thought as well, but members here on the forum pointed me to a method that uses wavelets for frequency definition of the concaves :D
all in all with the result of a more "brownian" motion property, and more "natural" outcome :D

check this out:
http://www.tangentspace.net/cz/archives/2005/08/markov-random-fields-wavelets-and-terrain-generation/

 :rotfl: :rotfl: Now those I could use

The laser is also useful to tattoo fractals in people's face ;D

dont become silly, how large would that tattoo be ? when tattoing the whole time while rendering ?!
rofl

Well, Jesse can implement the basic algorithm at first, then we can suggest him new methods  :dink:

I'm new both here and to M3D, so pardon me if this has already been mentioned.  I have some suggestions though. :)

• Can you add an option (on/off) to also save the clipboard text parameters to a text file when the m3p file is saved?
• Can you add the text parameters as a comment in the jpg?  That would make us uber easy to share both the image and parameters in a single step
• If/When text params are saved in the JPG's, can the OPEN dialogue box allow you to open the parameters from the JPG thumbnails displayed?  One of the versions of Apophysis (I think Apo-J) did this and it was nice to browse parameters by image.
• This last suggestion isn't FOR M3D, but is related TO it and sharing parameters.  I'm starting to use Google+ to "share" my text parameters and small 300x200 images to a stream (images under 2048x2048 don't count towards your storage space).  That what I have an eternal external archive of my parameters and thumbnails.  If anyone else is interested in a sharing circle on G+, look me up.  I'd be glad to add you to my circle if you return the favor. :)  I'm at gplus.to/danieleaton

Hello,
  I've another suggestion: export all points set in ply format  (http://paulbourke.net/dataformats/ply/) or equivalent.

bye,
   DarkBrain

Another useful option can be added for the background image; "Wallpaper mode" to use a lightmap tiled (like a plain  wallpaper) as a background. If liked it can be very cool to use two tiled maps instead of the "depth" colours as an infinite double plane.

I wrote a coloring algorithm for UltraFractal for tiled images. Don't know if you can find it useful?

Image {
;
; Image just displays an image from disk. It's best used on the Outside tab,
; together with the Pixel formula from Standard.ufm.
; TOO BAD, the standard "Image" don't have wrapping an I had
; to rewrite it... ;)
;
global:
  Image i = new @imageParam
  Image q = new Image
final:
  ; Use #pixel as the complex coordinate inside the image, but scale such that
  ; the default corner coordinates (-2,1.5)..(2,-1.5) correspond to the entire
  ; image width.
  float v = 0.5
  complex c = v * #pixel
  float w = 0
  float h = 0
  float w1 = 0
  float h1 = 0
  
  ; Make sure the ratio of the image is preserved.
  float ratio
  if !i.getEmpty()
    w = i.getWidth()
    h = i.getHeight()
    ratio = w / h
  else
    ratio = 1
  endif
  w1 = real(c) - round(real(v*c))/v
  h1 = imag(c* ratio) - round(imag(v*c* ratio))/v
  #color = i.getColor(w1 + flip(h1))

default:
  title = "Image (wrapped)"
  helpfile = "Uf*.chm"
  helptopic = "Html/coloring/standard/image.html"
  heading
    text = "Tip: the Image coloring algorithm works best with the standard \
      Pixel fractal formula. This wrapped version is strongly reccomended \
      to deal with any magnification, mapping!"
  endheading
  Image param imageParam
    caption = "Image"
    hint = "The image selected here will fill the entire layer, if combined \
      with the Pixel fractal formula and if the location is set to the \
      default. To do this, click the Reset button on the Location tab."
  endparam
}

This image was made with UF using two maps and the 3D mapping, as a sample :)

This is not a begging post, only a stupid idea! :nerd:

Indeed, looks neat beside the aliasing.  Would have to save downsized tiles and interpolate from them to overcome it.

Another drawback is that there is no room in the lighting header for more parameters, even some bits for more than 255 maps are really hard to find (else i would had already increased the maximum map count)!

What i did is a nicer spline interpolation for maps, so heightmaps and such stuff will become more interesting, i attached paras and a pic with the spline interpolation...

I have a Suggestion:

I think it will be useful to have sliders for Julia values (and other parameters maybe) on the nav window. I'm using Fragmentarium and this feature is good to find nice shapes with real-time rendering, specially with KIFS formulas. What do you think?

Of course, would make sense in the navi - even with some lower calculation speed compared to GPU based renderers.
Put it on the list, dunno when the right time for it will be  :horsie:

Most of the formulas have interesting j seeds at a given distance from the origin... yes spherical coords would be useful :)

And never tried to see 1/distance as a option for escape? Selectable option togheter with inside renders :)

I don't know whether this feature is already available or not:

Saving the rendered images automatically once rendering is over. I have recently lost an image rendered for 6 hours because of a computer power crash :(

Spherical coords for...?


For escaping the iteration loop?  You need to iterate until bailout on common R to get a valid DE, usually...
or do you mean to escape from raymarching?
Inside rendering is more or less done this way, i did: DE' = 2 * DEstop - DE
with low-val clamping to get the negative DE, then inside becomes the outside with fixed stepping.

So the inside feature might be already what you got in mind?  Only that 1/distance calculation for inside would
be not exact enough, i wouldn't even think about trying this in case of hybrids and so...

I meant spherical coords for julia seed input, but don't be mad about my foolings :)

The voxel feature is so futuristic looking! ;D great work

Thanks for including my suggestion, it's even better than I expected! All the other features of the new version are great also, good work!

And of course, thanks for adding the spherical coords Julia; 5 persons on DeviantArt told me explicitly that the feature is great, so a lot of people like it. :dink: :horsie: :mandel:

Thank you Kali, it is hard to believe how we could live without it all the time.  :beer:

Some randomish ideas for dIFS baseshapes; create solids lathing a bitmap around z axis, good to create columns, glasses of water, vases, light bulbs or whatever ;)

(http://www.traptcg.com/sites/default/files/tutorials/images/SplinesLathe_1073.jpg)

Ain't it cool? :embarrass:

Adding an offset we can also create toruses, and adding a spinning angle ... a Mobius strip :o or a spring :dink:

Ok well !
Since the possibilities are infinite !
How about a global positionig system to navigate with.
I get lost all the time in these fractals.

Maybe for fractals, not for me  :dink:


You can send always the original parameters into the navi again to reset the position, or use the fixed steps options (F6) to keep stepwidth and to control zooming by yourself, regardless of clipping the fractal.

You might meant something else, more infos then please.

What I had in mind is a 3d visual reference of the camera location (a dot maybe) on a zoomed out transparent fractal.
And maybe someday an editable camera path.
I'm a dreamer so I am not sure if it is even possible.
As is tha nav panel is awsome.
Getting lost is part of the fun.

Ok i see, would be nice but i would not expect to find that in the next time in m3d, sorry!
Way to much things waiting to be done and that are a bit more in my interest  :dink:

This days i made a animation, and  i thought it would be nice if at the animation window  can be add a sound channel and we can put animation keys to the soudtrack, in that way we can add key frame exactly when we need acording to the soundtrack we have .....

This is my animation , you would understand what i mean with that channel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZRiEeTdrew&feature=plcp&context=C39dd128UDOEgsToPDskJgvmSyZ08R1fchMVGyXGAy

Might i suggest an "are you sure you want to exit the program" popup ;)
oh boy I dont know how many times ive accidentally closed the programme down while i was meant to close a parameters panel or whatever. I should be more careful tho really :D

Oh no, I hate confirmation popups!  ;D - also not needed at all because current parameters are copied to the clipboard when you exit the program  :dink:

Someone asked the same question a long time ago and Jesse said that he was trying to minimize the number of popups and would not do that.

a "popup-free" solution for this issue might be possible. a file-based undo list. normally i wouldn't suggest to copy mandelbulber features, but this is so handy and it rescued me more than once.

in addition i would also suggest a redo button.

Right click on the undo button

thanks bib. i thought, i would disgrace myself with this. :embarrass: too implausible, that noone thought of it before. i'm still learning...

No problem Taurus. It took me a long time to realize that too :D

By the way, there are many hidden right click options everywhere in M3D. For example on the Calculate 3D button you can enable automatic saving of the m3i file once render is done.