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Dear all,

I've been seriously testing all the software that is available out there.
My interest is mostly creating high-end cinematic visuals and animations for a personal project.

Mandelbulber 3D OpenCL v 1.2 is so far the most fulfilling software for what I'd like to do.
On a good 64bit machine with strong GPU the performance is great and is well beyond everything else on the market (except for latest subblue's stuff, which is out of reach for mortals).

However, there's a series of things that are blocking me with my project.
1) Very limited formulas set. I would need the ability to add foldings and symmetry or use Hybrid formulas.
I know there is support for custom formulas, but I'd need some help getting through basic implementations. Is there anyone who could help or point me to a good set of tutorials on how to implement basic stuff? I am not a professional developer, but have some basic scripting knowledge and used to do some OOP years ago. So I probably could get into the stuff pretty quickly with a bit of help, just to work around the current limitations in terms of formulas avail.

2) Z-Buffer - that's crucial for VFX pipeline and making the renderings usable.

I know there's already V2, but looks like there's no OpenCL features yet and feature set is quite limited. I know it takes time.

Is there any chance someone could help me (and hordes of other VFX folks) out and add Z-Buffer to V1.2 OpenCL?
Is there any ETA or roadmap for V2 developments?

Thank you!


 

Many thanks. Already got through it and that helps a bit.
Now a million dollar question.

In 1.12 there was a great save layers option.
http://www.fractalforums.com/gallery-b177/image-layers-in-separate-files/

Is there any chance to get it working in 1.21 OpenCL?
Is it the matter of simply including the old code in the new OpenCL software or it needs to be recoded from scratch?
Would anybody help with this? Would make my day!

Thank you yohun for an update.
As for V2 if you can add layers to the list of the most expected features - would be fantastic.
Import/export features for camera work would be a great thing as well, but I can live without it.

Yes, I realize V2 may be the priority, but also since it's a community driven software I don't expect quick progress.
So I thought along the lines: If there was a feature that was working in previous version and if 1.21 already has a decent feature set including OpenCL support, maybe someone would be so kind to put an hour or 2 and enable layers in 1.21. So I'm still hoping for help on this one.