Buddhi I'm happy to hear the virtual projector is possible, music videos and art manipulation will open right up. New functions like this will make mandelbulber sing. It would be a powerful feature if video could be used for background and texture mapping media, by synchronising the video frame by frame with the keyframe animation output. It could be done now, but I would have to generate a settings file for each frame... I don't like spreadsheets that much.
Here is the transparency issue:
<Quoted Image Removed>
Notice the grey area on the right of the globe. Almost any amount of fine detail results in this, is it to do with reflections depth?
By the way, I do want to request a much higher limit for reflections depth, 100 would be a start, 1000 good. Possible?
I just had a thought, it would be nice to include primitives in boolean mode. This would also solve my request for spherical limits. Simple functions are awesome because they can be well understood.
Cheers
About your issue with transparency it was easy to solve. You forgot to set reflectance of material. Glass has to refract the light (transparency) and also reflect the light. Without reflectance there was visible inner surface which you set to light grey (it's just surface color).
To the program there is attached example glass material (use Load material option) where you can see how it can be defined.
I had also changed maxiter (limit of maximum number of iterations). It was 250, now is 25. It enough to provide good quality and speeds up raymarching inside transparent object where there is always needed to calculate maximum number of iterations (like inside Mandelbrot Set)
Try these settings:
# Mandelbulber settings file
# version 2.08
# only modified parameters
[main_parameters]
ambient_occlusion_quality 7;
aux_light_colour_1 ff00 ff00 ff00;
aux_light_enabled_1 true;
aux_light_intensity_1 2,2;
aux_light_position_1 3 1,5 -0,5;
aux_light_visibility 0,8;
aux_light_visibility_size 0,02;
basic_fog_color 7100 7400 7c00;
basic_fog_visibility 0,213796;
boolean_operators true;
brightness 1,04;
camera 0,124452008690805 -1,747837355273807 -0,09362542846960924;
camera_distance_to_target 1,101191401481629;
camera_rotation -3,311552952528574 9,218191784577634 4,682382376725372;
camera_top 0,07227293318983721 -0,1641088583643975 0,9837910884605895;
constant_DE_threshold true;
DE_factor 0,645654;
delta_DE_function 0;
detail_level 5;
file_background /home/krzysztof/dane/3D/Tekstury/Backgrounds/Spherical/PaperMill_A_8k.jpg;
flight_last_to_render 0;
fog_color_1 ff00 ff00 7f00;
fog_color_2 ff00 0000 0000;
fog_color_3 aa00 0000 ff00;
formula_2 73;
formula_3 73;
formula_material_id_2 2;
formula_material_id_3 3;
formula_position_2 0 5 0;
formula_position_3 0 5 0;
formula_rotation_2 75 0 0;
formula_rotation_3 60 0 0;
formula_scale_1 0,5;
fov 0,7;
gamma 0,89;
glow_enabled false;
image_height 720;
image_width 1280;
iteration_fog_color_1 3b00 ff00 0000;
iteration_fog_color_2 0000 ff00 ff00;
iteration_fog_color_3 ff00 ff00 0000;
iteration_fog_opacity 27542,3;
iteration_fog_opacity_trim 1;
julia_c_1 0 0,2 0,1;
julia_mode_1 true;
keyframe_last_to_render 0;
main_light_enable false;
main_light_intensity 0,3;
mat1_fresnel_reflectance true;
mat1_reflectance 1;
mat1_specular 10;
mat1_specular_width 0,263;
mat1_transparency_of_surface 1;
mat1_use_colors_from_palette false;
mat2_coloring_palette_size 20;
mat2_coloring_random_seed 1655;
mat2_coloring_speed 10;
mat2_is_defined true;
mat2_surface_color_palette 7b00ff 3200ff 011cff 0069ff 00b6ff 00fefc 00ffb3 01fe67 00fe1a 30ff00 78ff00 c5fe01 ffec01 ff9f00 fe5200 ff0600 ff0048 ff0197 ff00e4 ca01ff;
mat3_coloring_palette_size 6;
mat3_coloring_random_seed 3118;
mat3_is_defined true;
mat3_luminosity 0,2;
mat3_surface_color_palette 009403 44159c 00d9b7 4d558b 60a93c 85771e;
N 25;
penetrating_lights false;
raytraced_reflections true;
target 0,1872411885153338 -0,6626823771907135 0,08277948964640756;
textured_background true;
volumetric_fog_colour_1_distance 0,0134896;
volumetric_fog_colour_2_distance 0,0269153;
volumetric_fog_distance_factor 0,0269153;
[fractal_1]
IFS_rotation_enabled true;
power 3;
[fractal_2]
IFS_rotation_enabled true;
[fractal_3]
IFS_rotation_enabled true;
[fractal_4]
IFS_rotation_enabled true;
[fractal_5]
[fractal_6]
[fractal_7]
[fractal_8]
[fractal_9]
About animated backgrounds and textures I have this in my mind. I need to look for some easy solutions to implement it. I think it should be enough to be able to use sequences of JPG or PNG files (it's easy to export any mpeg/avi animation to sequence of jpg frames)
About your request to increase maximum allowable reflections depth. I do not agree here, because it's not reasonable (and horribly slow for rendering) to use higher number than 10. It will only produce heavy noise and could lead to big numeric errors (even generation of Not-A-Number). If you give me any example where it could be used, I will change my mind.
About booleans for primitives I also though about that. It would be possible to implement it but there will be needed to develop some nice UI for it. Mayby in v2.10.
Instead of that I can easily implement spherical limits.