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Dear friends, what pros & cons does each program have in Your opinion?
The criteria may be different:
from how friendly the interface and how fast is the render process to the artistic value, diversity & photorealism of the the rendered images.
Hope that is interesting for many beginners in 3D fractals.
With best regards,
Sfumato.
P. S. I don't mean to start a competition between Buddhi and Jesse of course! ;D

I have both but prefer MB3D over Bulber but it's all a matter of personal preference.
IMHO MB3D is much simpler in it's layout, easier to understand, easier to Navigate, faster rendering.
Bulber confuses me and it's not easy to navigate, Deep Zooms in Bulber seem more detailed and the Render engine it seems to me is maybe superior to MB3D but damn it's slow. Like I said, a matter of personal preference, they both get you where you want to go

Agree completely with the above!

It's all a matter of which interface you find more intuitive.  Mandelbulb 3D just flows better for me.  I struggle with Mandelbulber and still try every once in a while to make sense of it, then wind up back in M3D   :alien:

I agree with Lenord, MB3D just seems a little more intuitive.  I have both as well, but I rarely use Mandelbulber.
On one hand, Mandelbulber has a wider variety of lighting options (such as volumetric lights).  On the other MB3D is just easier to use in general.

I would love to become more familiar with Mandelbulber, but I am fine with MB3D right now.

Mb3d has plugabble formulas and the amoint of formulas grew in the last time very huge
combined in hbvrid modes just an endless amount of possibilities

Mbulber is open source which is quite nice

Thank You for Your opinion. Your opinion is very valuable and interesting!
And concerning the results, i. e. final pics, doesn't Bulber seem to provide more
a. versatile
b. photorealistic
images.

I do not agree that Bulber is more versitile, I feel MB3D is.
Like I said also, IMHO Bulbers Render engine is probably better but I will take the trade off of Photorealism over Time spent waiting on a Render to complete. Photorealism is all fine and good but I'm not taking Pictures here, I'm doing Fractals.

While we're talking about this, I have always wondered why Mandelbulber is more photorealistic.  Can anyone answer this?

the funniest thing is to talk about photorealism on totaly virtual objects ;)
but go on, do as you like .... :D

Thank You, BrutalToad  I'm not alone  :D
Concerning photorealism it seems the reason is DOF is calculated in Mandelbulber in some other way (?), surfaces look 'smoother' and volumetric light, these three reasons make some Bulber objects look like photos, not computer-generated ...
With best regards,
Sfumato.

My thoughts exactly

I would agree that Bulber produces a more realistic image of an imaginary object....but to me navigation in Bulb is far superior, making it possible to explore so much easier, even if at times the program strangely choses a zoom far from where your picture is....but the navigation  window to me is a very stron motivator, and...as said, the interface is simply easier to work with.....reder speed is a good point, especially while exploring

Even if my program works slower and it is more difficult to use (of course not for me), I'm proud of it. :D . But there are some things where my program is better  :nastyteeth:
1) it's open source,
2) multiplatform: Linux, Windows, OSX (Mac) (should also work on ARM CPUs)
3) 64-bit version (now for all systems) - almost unlimited image resolution
4) volumetric light effect

i used both mb3d and bulber. and while i still prefer mandelbulber, i refuse to call it better. it's all a matter of personal taste and which goal you pursue. both programs have pros and cons.
but one preconception i need to mention here: the navigation
while some of you might prefer mb3d's navigator, it is not better - it's different to bulbers navigation. i really prefer the navigation of mandelbulber for its accuracy. especially while deep zooming the navigator of mb3d often starts to jump around, fully out of (my) control - not acceptable for my purposes. in bulber i can reach every point near the fractal surface - limited only by the floating point precision of my computer.
after understanding the principles of bulbers navigation it is as easy to use as mb3d. so for me the navigator is not easier to use, it's only quicker - and limited in its usability.

regards
taurus
 

Not to forget the better ambient occlusion with a great sense of light and colors.
And because of its compiler flexibility it has a better future, so the time of MB has still to come.

Did you ever checked how hard it would be to include OpenCL or CUDA into your code?
That could inverse the drawback in calculation speed.

I would have to start from zero to support these compilers.

not only,Buddhi , it has also a good guide that is very important for novices (as me..) that is totally missed for mandlelburb 3D (luckily there are some good tut on deviantart, but still your guide is far more complete , especially regarding animation

nevertheless i would not say that one is better then the other

But well i believe for somebody new to 3d fractal will be no doubts, in that case a good starting guide is the winning point ,and in this case on this point would be no match.

And here i want add my compliment, is rare for Open Source software, especially in case of one-man project to offer a decent documentation

I prefare M3D, coz mandelbulber don't works on my PC. This is hudge difference :hurt:

Tutorials and help files sounds as good job for community. Someone with good enought english could do it.

Greetings everyone,

Can Mandlebubler technically get the same results as M3D? I'm asking because for most of the time, simply by looking at a 3d fractal render, I can differentiate whish software was used. In my opinion, M3D has more richness and details. It might be because artists are more experienced with M3D but I'm still curious.

M3D has more fractal formulas and easier user interface. It offers also more possibilities to tweak and mix formulas. Mandelbulber offers the same or even higher render quality and is multiplatform (Windows, Linux (32 and 64 bit), OsX), but has limited number of formulas. It's my opinion as a creator of Mandelbulber  :D