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

BTW

Your latest settings file,  automatically use deltaDE log because of the type of formulas you have in the other slots. And is probably the optimum DE for that combination. If you open the statistics, you will see a percentage of wrong distance estimations of 2. This is generally not good and  the areas of bad DE can be seen in the rendered image. If you turn off the color palette for Material 3, the image will turn grey and it is easier to see where the bad DE is disintegrating the fractal image.

I have not explored the Collatz formula very much, but I know it is difficult to find settings with good DE. But it does make some cool nteresting hybrids.  I will zip up the settings files that I have and post them here.

I learned later, no matter what the combo, that using DE settings such as 0.01 did cause some fractures in the resulting image. Hence, started using the Optimisation buttons (usually High quality) which did produce better results than manually setting DE.

Still weird, imo,, that I ran into trouble with just the one so far.

Bhuddhi's suggestion, while not perfect, is most helpful. I could experiment with DE settings in 10 to see what happens, or just use 8 to get what I want.

@Bhuddhi, thanks for the Distance estimation function to Delta DE Logarithmic tip. It works quite well with DE_factor = 0.5, but, in the case of the box folding example I posted, is a perfect match with DE factor set to 0.1.

Just saying.