END OF AN ERA, FRACTALFORUMS.COM IS CONTINUED ON FRACTALFORUMS.ORG

There is too much rain and not anought sun;)

I think Idealy 3D fractal generator should have:

Hybridisation, coz (in M3D) it's the most fun feature. The most popular alternation is pretty simple, execute one formula, then another, then third, then again first one.

Formula parser or compiler as in Fragmentarium or Chaos Pro, for an advanced users to explore formulas. I just had one formula, but since assambler is beyond my skills, and writing formula for M3D is like hacking I can't explore them in good raytracer http://www.fractalforums.com/new-theories-and-research/swirlbox/ . And then there is mandelX about whome everyone are exited. http://www.fractalforums.com/new-theories-and-research/an-interesting-fractal-the-mandelex-%28inspired-by-the-box%29/

And good enought colour algorithm unlike of fragmentarium, so that colour would be pallete based, preferably fractints .map files or of some another established fractal generated fractal generator with hudge database. M3D colours are pallete based, but it uses it's own format, so it had just a few colour palettes until I did additional 77;) Then alsou compiler for a colour methods, so colour formulas alsou could be explored like it is in Chaos Pro, which works with most of Ultra Fractal's colour formulas from it's hudge database.
Or maybe colours could be abandoned altogether, and a texture could be used instead as in all normal 3D.

Good enought tools to zoom or move to the fractal, something in between M3D and Chaos Pro could be good.

That is 6 features, if fast GPU rendering is included, then 7. Or simpler: hybridisation, compiler, colours / textures and GPU.

It looks as large list, but then everything must not appear simulatenuesly, and if it's posted, some other developers could notice;)

Thank you all for the advices!

So, what there WILL be:

• Mixed CPU / GPU rendering
• User programmale pipeline. The user can write custom script for: DE, bruteforce raymarcher, shading, postprocessing.
• Hybridisation (via scripts)
• Nice GUI. A friend of mine is doing a great job with Qt!

What there will be in LATER releases:

• Network rendering
• Color palette
• Hybridisation (via GUI)
• Movie rendering
• ...(keep on suggesting!)

What is still open:

• Arbitrary precision. Useful, but could introduce huge slowdown
• Alternative rendering engines
• Textures, both static and procedural
• ...

Radiosity looks very interesting, but at the moment I don't think I can implement it. It works only on patches (meshes), and I think it will be too expensive to generate meshes from procedural formulas with enough resolution... But if you have more resources I'm happy to read them and do some investigation! (for personal interest too)

I'm considering starting a thread or a blog about the development... I Will keep you updated!

about the hybridisation and gui

in my eyes many many many possibilities must be considered there, some kind of node system might be handy for such ...

consider the following:

lets think of we have
formula a and
formula b

all the following combinations must be covered with the gui:

abababababa.... ( plain alternation, 1xa + 1xb )
bababababab.... ( plain alternation, 1xb + 1xa )
aabaabaabaab... ( alternation with amounts: 2xa + 1xb )
abbabbabbabb... ( alternation with amounts: 1xa+2xb)

dont forget, ordering is crucial....

and any combination of such, meaning to repeat a combination forever,
but such combinations should be as well doable with the hybrid editor:

aaaaaaaaaaab.... ( begin with a for n steps, continue with b)
bbbbbbbbbba.... (begin with b for n steps, continue with a )

or

aaaaabaaaaa.... ( place formula b at a certain iteration, continue with formula a )
bbbbbabbbb.... ( continue with formula b )

or the complete arbitrary placement of formulas:

aabaaaaaba.... (continue in any manner, basically allow each iteration to use a different formula)

the organisation of such might be very time consuming and slowing down a final render, but hey, the result is what counts

AND NOW COMES THE MOST CRUCIAL PART:

any hybrid has to be selectable/saveable as new base formula!!!!

Right Alef and that is what the first version MAY allow but we are talking about how to make it usable for non-coders.

I am sorry for the late reply.
It seems to illuminate a fractal surface using the Radiocity method we have to approximate a mesh using polygons. Assign a coefficient to the polygon dualities depending on how much they see each other(depending on the distance and angle) and using the the Radiocity equations solve the arising system of linear equations. The biggest problem here is that to exactly solve the system of linear equations with the magnitude of n we would need to process n^3.  Meaning if the scene we would like to render is expressed by a million polygons, the amount of processing that needs to be done is around 10^18. Of course we wouldn't want to compromise the amount of polygons (would reduce image quality). But we don't have to solve the system of linear equations exactly. We could use Gauss-Seidel type iterative methods. I hope that makes sense I am no programmer(but i might work on a Radiocity engine myself). 

I also like the idea of arbitrary precision.

Wow, it has been one month since I last wrote here... I have some news

The development continues slower as I expected, but today I got the first images! Here you can find some more details and a screenshot:
https://synthverse.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/syn-first-images/