Mandelbulber - new Open Source program for rendering high quality Mandelbulbs

[Fractex]

Thanks so much to Buddhi for creating the Mandelbulber and to makemeunsee for compiling it for Windows. The Mandelbulber is a joy to use, (I stayed up most of the night playing with it) and the source code is very clean & instructive. Although I've had some small previous experience with Qt, GTK+ seems to be quite straightforward in comparison. Can't wait for the updates!

[Buddhi]

Hi

I have just released version 0.21 of Mandelbulber program for Linux (for Windows should be also in few days)

Download binary and source:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mandelbulber/

new features:

    * added tool-tips for each button and edit field
    * added fractal colouring algorithm
    * added "sphere" formula for testing shaders
   
fixed bugs:

    * fixed bug with hanging refreshing of image in window after using Stop button
    * fixed loading textures for envmaps and lightmaps (on Windows caused some strange artifacts on image - to checked by makemeunsee)
    * fixed problem with wrong rendering time calculation on Windows (thanks to makemeunsee)

other changes:

    * optimised conditions in CalculateInterations() function (10% faster)
    * optimised calculation of Tglad's formula (15% faster)
    * some little changes in GUI

[Buddhi]

Now there is also Mandelbulber 0.21 for Windows. Thanks to makemeunsee.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mandelbulber/

If something needs to be fixed or improve please let me know.

[blob]

Great, thanks.

I have spotted a few typos on the interface that you may want to correct in a future version:

Fractal forlula (formula)
Textured backgruond (background)
Coloring radnom (random) seed
calculation of analityc (analytic) DE
Backgrond (Background) color 1

Cheers.

[Buddhi]

Hi

Because there are some questions how to render animations using my program, I prepared some short manual how to do this:

1. Prepare starting view-point. You can click "Init 3D Navigator", then the camera will move to the default starting position. You can also put your own camera coordinates and angle, set "perspective" to around 1.5 and "Close up (zoom)" to very low value (e.g 1e-6). You can also decide how fast flight will be. It is adjustable by the "Flight speed (DE multiplier). Camera speed is proportional to estimated distance to the fractal surface.
2. Set up very low image resolution (e.g. 160x120) and "Scale in window" to higher value (e.g. 4). Because my programs offers high quality of images instead of calculation speed it will be faster to record flight track in low resolution.
3. Click "Record path" and navigate camera by mouse movement inside render window. Your flight track is recorded in "paths/path.txt: file (in default) and low-res stills are recorded in "images/imageXXXX.jpg" files
4. When the flight path is ready, set-up requested resolution of animation (e.g. 1280x720) and other quality parameters
5. Set up image stills destination path by "Select file paths / destination image sequence". This folder should be empty.
6. Save actual setting by "Save settings". It will be helpful when you will want to continue rendering animation after stop.
7. Click "Render animation". Animation is now rendering according to camera coordinates saved in path.txt file.
If you want to continue rendering animation which you started before (e.g. after some power failure), please load proper settings file and just click on "Render animation". Program will scan which frames are already rendered and render all missed frames.

[Buddhi]

I moved this topic to the right place in forum
http://www.fractalforums.com/mandelbulb-software/mandelbulber-open-source-program-for-rendering-high-quality-mandelbulbs/

New Mandelbulber has been just released!

[jwm-art]

Great program Buddhi, thanks for open-sourcing it. Just some minor criticisms at the moment: I found the release naming convention a little confusing - I wasn't sure if I was getting source or binaries but the package contained both and I built it from source after reading the README. At the moment I'm stumbling around in it. It's currently running on a 64bit Gentoo testing install. Nice :-)