These are just my toughts. Nothing more.
Really there is not mutch to improve, Mandelbulb3D is classics. Well, it could be but that would require large effors, dedication and knowledge about 3D rendering what I would not expect from curent state. If there will be a version 2 then it must have something new;)
So I think:
1.
Mandelbulb3D can generate 2D fractals but as side effect. Maybe there could be a "Calculate 2D" button. Not shure does it will be very usefull. But it is fun and it alredy it does it just without button.
2. If you do 2D you notice that in 2D colours are different than in cutouts. In Chaos Pro there is no hard coded cutouts so I made them in formulas as autobailout - if Cutout = TRUE. Then it is just like normal surfaces and cutouts looks just like that surface would look in 2D.
Cutouts that don't look as a cutouts but normal surfaces? Not very usefull, too. Or maybe not if fractal is cut becouse it goes throught screen
3. More colours methods or orbit traps shapes? Orbit traps shapes and moved trap center works for all colour formulas including exponent smothing and lyapunov. The most different and smooth could be wave trichrome (modified orbit counting of Fractal Explorer)
wave trichrome Ultra Fractal
float antilightG=1/@lightG ; default @lightG = 1.2
float dataG=@seed ; default @seed= 1
loop:
cabsz = cabs(z) ; complex abs
cnt=cnt+1 ; default @scalarG= 1.2
IF (@colmethod ==0)
dataG = (dataG + recip(cnt) )/( @scalarG + cabsz*antilightG)
ELSEIF (@colmethod ==1)
dataG = (dataG )/( @scalarG + cabsz*antilightG)
ENDIF
sumG=sumG + dataG
final:
resultG = abs(sumG)
; on @lightB = 0.25 and @scalarB= 0.25 it can be used as direct, values 0 to ~1
Probably not very usefull, too
All of them could be tested in Chaos Pro. 3D raymarcher + all of the UF database.
4. MutaGen - great stuff.
Maybe with iteration count it could alsou mutate bailout value. And it would be good if one could set mutation range by numbers, say mutate Abox scale from -3 to +3. It's largely a guess. Maybe that will just make it overloaded. But it would be usefull for julia sets becouse all julias are in certain range.
But maybe it's alredy OK.
5.
In Chaos Pro there is something like glitter effect with a random noise applied to light. That must be very easy to implement. It is not something great but maybe adds some effect. In Ultra Fractal I used noise with tanh function makeing it slightly milder
result=abs( tanh(@amount *real(#random)) +result)
That was applied to colours.
Throught sandstone surfaces effect on mandelbulb would be more advanced effect but alsou more coding intensive;) (If I understand correctly that is what "fractal textures" does in Fragmentarium.)
I could be wrong but alsou M3D realy can't produce transcluent (sorry for english) objects. I meant like marble or milky ice on hockey field. This could be a surface effect and not what does a transparency.
Mandelbulb with both transcluency, texture and glitter would be just like legs of human females;) That would be very usefull but would require a lot of coding.
6.
Professional use - need for speed. It don't require so mutch raytracing guality as speed. So Fragmentarium or shadertoys site is better. Well, I think settings in some ini files could make Navigator just like that, more solid render but not being too slow. But single flag in Navigator could do it too.
For me that would be useless but then I could watch some better fractal based images;)
p.s.
Most of that exept advanced 3D stuff I could make easely if I would have delphi. Of corse that would rewuire to look throught all of the code. That would be the hardest part. Strange than none had made their versions.