Recent features - please explain?

[quaestor]

I can't figure out the recent 'Fog' settings on the 'Shaders' tab (I guess that's the "volumetric fog"?). The 'Auto fog' button works well, but I'm a control freak and would like to know what things do and how they work , and manually tweaking those parameters doesn't yield anything predictable.
Also, I'm mystified by 'Background 3' and 'Fog 3' in the 'Colours' section - I've tweaked those two all kinds of ways in combination with colors 1 & 2 and have no clue what they do.
Last thing: I think I sort of understand the 'Volumetric light' settings, but I don't get why some settings render very quickly (seconds or minutes) but a slight tweak away from those settings yields an estimated time on the order of hours.
All in all, though - excellent program (once I climbed over the navigation learning curve o_o). Worlds better than the Mandelbox navigation in certain other programs[1]. All of them, really .

[1] The GPU realtime programs are great for exploring; not so great for controlling palettes, render settings, etc.

[taurus]

try this. should answer most of your questions...

Code:

Mandelbulber 1.121;

image_height 800;

view_point_x 9.808550044642768;

view_point_y -13.3679927290974;

view_point_z -8.2284178040485649;

angle_alfa 29.999999999999996;

angle_beta 20;

zoom 6.666666666666667;

formula 8;

quality 2;

brightness 0.80000000000000004;

ambient_occlusion 2;

glow_intensity 0.10000000000000001;

glow_color_1_R 65535;

glow_color_1_G 1935;

glow_color_1_B 0;

glow_color_2_R 64715;

glow_color_2_G 65535;

glow_color_2_B 0;

background_color_1_R 65535;

background_color_1_G 51968;

background_color_1_B 34596;

background_color_2_R 49582;

background_color_2_G 26523;

background_color_2_B 26523;

background_color_1_G 51968;

background_color_1_B 34596;

coloring_random_seed 23423;

coloring_speed 2;

coloring_palette_offset 25.5;

fish_eye 1;

mandelbox_scale 2.5;

mandelbox_color_Sp1 0.5;

volumetric_fog_density 0.40000000000000002;

volumetric_fog_colour_1_distance 0.10000000000000001;

volumetric_fog_colour_2_distance 0.20000000000000001;

volumetric_fog_distance_factor 0.20000000000000001;

[quaestor]

As it turns out, that's not actually helpful at all for the fog parameters. Same boat as before; regardless of how I tweak the parameters, I do not get consistent, explicable results. "Fog colour 1 distance" - distance from what?! The camera? The surface? Fog colour 2? "Fog distance factor" - this is worse that the other two. Not only is it a distance from some undefined something-or-other, it's a *factor* as well...
OK, the background I get. You just have to be zoomed waaaay out to see the effect of color 3.
And thanks for the help with volumetric lights, btw.

[Buddhi]

Fog colour 1 distance and Fog colour 2 distance are distances from the fractal surface where the colour of the fog changes to next one (colours defined by Colours/Fog 1,2,3). Fog distance factor decides how far from the fractal surface the fog will be dense. After this distance the fog will be almost not visible.