END OF AN ERA, FRACTALFORUMS.COM IS CONTINUED ON FRACTALFORUMS.ORG

Very hard to tell without the params. However, if I am not mistaken, MB3D saves the formulas that you have in the "Formulas" windows at the moment of requesting the save, even if you did not computed its result. This is you didn't hit the button "Calculate 3D". So you have an image but the formulas for a different fractal.  You can even have a third one in the Navi window which sometimes is very useful for correcting mistakes. And finally, if you realize your mistake before closing the program, the undo button can put you many steps back.

Max iterations at 13 and a low Stepwidth multiplier to render the thin structures properly.
 

Less iterations means less details, that is true.  The default operating mode of m3d is to set the max(imum) iterations to a high value and let m3d do iterate as long as needed until the the vector length becomes bigger than the bailout value.
Then you can influence the amount of details by the DEstop value, that determines at what distance to the mandel(or other objects-) set the raymarching stops.
Try to set max iteration to 60 or higher and DEstop to 20 or so (it is relative to one pixel) and see the difference.  You get less details too by a high DEstop value, but in a different way.

The Raystep multiplier affects the raymarching and is not changing the object itself, but in some cases you have to set it to a lower value than default to avoid overstepping, that means that you miss the object and you got holes or structures are missing.

greets2