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

as you know, i'm no programmer, but i have some expierience with several 3d rendering engines (cinema 4d, pov and some low level renderers built in cad software).
i am courious, if this is possible in a program, that does not provide a real 3d mesh for rendering.
the shadows in your image sample are not only softened (which should be easy), they are area shadows. the ammount of blur is related to the distance between shadow caster and shadow reciever (easy to see when you follow the shadow of the pillar in the middle of the room).
in 3d mesh renderer it increases rendering time moderate, according to the precision used. the softening reflection is also related to distances, so should be similar.

the other effect in your sample - radiosity - is far more expensive. afaik there are several methods of creating radiosity (sample rays, stochastic modes etc.), but in all cases it increases the rendering time dramatically. i guess this won't be very different in 3d fractal renderers, if possible at all.

when someone manages to implement those features, i'll be the first to be thankful trying the possibilities - even if it takes weeks to finish a rendering
after area shadows and radiosity, there's not much left to create ultra realistic images. maybe lighting with hdri maps... (just a joke)

Yes, Fragmentarium (in recent GitHub versions) supports both soft shadows via (circular) area lights, and Image Based Lighting using HDRi's (using panoramic .hdr RGBE images for specular, diffuse, and background). There is also simulated Depth-of-field and HDR tone mapping.

For some test renders see, e.g.:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/syntopia/7270132662/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/syntopia/7376230282/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/syntopia/6919800648/in/photostream

Wrt speed: Image Based lighting is fast and doesn't slow rendering much (well, not unless you want to calculate shadows based on the HDRi images, in which case rendering will be *much* slower).

Soft shadows and (simulated) Depth-of-field on the other hand requires many samples for each pixel. As rendering time is proportional to the number of samples, this means an image might be 100x slower to calculate (which still might be only a few seconds for simple geometry such as the knot).

It is true that the color bleeding (e.g. red shadows on the white column) on DarkBeams images requires multiple bounces - which again increases rendering times. I plan to do a path tracer implementation at some point, which will allow this - not sure much is gained when working with something with such complicated geometry as fractals, though.

it's not only the shadows, that make the difference in radiosity, it's also the color interaction between close surfaces. hdr shadows are already simulated in ambient occlusion and - depending on the scene - not so bad. but the "color bleeding" is something different...

i think you understood,what i mean. sure, ao is not sufficient to simulate hard contrast maps, but a sky for example with relative constant light is well represented with ambient occlusion - the sunlight is not. but sunlight is also not well represented with global illumination, as the sun normally casts hard shadows.

fantastic realtime demo. i see, that i'm not up to date in those things. my (a bit aged) vesion of cinema 4d needs minutes to produce similar results.
i thought gpgpu is the future, but it's present time too 

Btw, shooting hundreds of rays per pixel is probably not a good idea for M3D (where this feature request was posted).

But the color bouncing/bleeding effects can be simulated in screen space in a way similar to SSAO - this is called SSDO:

http://www.geeks3d.com/20100619/ssdo-screen-space-directional-occlusion/
http://cg.alexandra.dk/tag/ssdo/ (sorry, in danish)

I'm not sure it adds much to the realism, but at least it is fast to compute :-)

In the meantime I made a room Difs formula with differently colored walls...


Mandelbulb3Dv17{
Z.....x/...r3.../....2....URw8.Q.xCpzqSzkBKh6./Eus1dtEUAIz9qX0XQDgmgysrUO8uaqRsD
................................UcA7IS5db.2........A./..................S/2...wD
.........cks/.../M.0/.....UF0...8.....E4.....M1iZvSkeSlD/......./K3o0dkpXm1.QJJV
./EnAnQD12..2..dDIRZanH1.lhoC1mtCxzjx7yQCif9K.A............u1....y1...sD...../..
.z1...sDV.lKPUB1YwnayWlLcAbMyqAp2k5p3Onj2dfAa1qWEqHTSr/foQ8CzqLjjMw6mEaD6M5uxFRV
qwfCoXHF3r4Iy0uGga/qAEmj......IX..............kD.I....sD..E.0...................
.............oAnAt1...sD....zUmbo9.mTGj.c/8x0UEco9.eVGj.678x0Uico9....../....k1.
..................kz.wzzz1.U..6......M4...EB....W..........F....8/...I1.....SN52
...U.qFG9yzb2zzzRYoWzz7lz16/4IZzzzzz..EzRQrzS4uD3Yl1z/xv9z9.s6ZeQQLlz2.28.kFrA0.
.Ub96aAIVz9.1se7Umvxz0........../EU0.wzzz1...........s/........./.........E.2c..
zzzz.............0...................2./8.kzzzD.................................
/EU0.wzzz1...................................wzzz1kzzzjvz10U.06.zzzzS9R7z1...wzz
zTi0g.6U.0kzzzjvxy1U.06.zzzzi1.I.06U.wzzzviHF/6U.0kzzzjvvJ3U.06.zzzzi5wJ.06U.wzz
zvCmw/.U..kzzzjv..EsUa3.eeWCNq0.IJ36wk8.wyLsUa3.................................
E....2....E.....I....o....UQjxKPXlaQ7NoI.A5...........................U1C....6..
..........UaNaNaNaNiz..........E................................OaNaNaNaty1.....
..............zD........kz1........wz..........E...................wz...........
........................}

The color diffusion looks very subtle btw I don't notice a diffusion of the green?

And, what if you realize a "stoppable" rendering? I mean, that you can halt anytime like in the realtime script