Mandelbulber Tutorial: Basic Settings II

World Building

G’day. With this, the third in a series of entries dealing with generating your own fractal art using the Mandelbulber software, v.1.16, by Krzysztof Marczak. Here, I’ll discuss the settings for Mandelbulber’s Shaders 1 and Shaders 2 tabs. Here, and from this point on, I’ll be limiting these tutorials to sixteen or fewer settings. For earlier entries, see the first and second of this series here and here respectively.

Figure 1

Shaders 1 tab (figure 1):

Reflection: This determines the intensity of virtual light reflected from the fractal surface. This may be used by itself to illuminate an object even in the absence of ‘direct light’ or ‘ambient intensity,’ i.e, those settings each assigned a value of 0. My typical value set for this ranges from 0.1 to less than 1.0.

Reflections depth: This is quite cool, and may be used to adjust the reflective quality of a surface up or down as needed. I usually use a value of from 0-5 for most images.

Glow: This determines the intensity of the volumetric glow effect, a radiance that shines from the fractal surface itself. This is handy for spectral-looking images or as a sort of misty effect, a sort of luminescent ‘faux fog’ that gets denser the closer into the figure one zooms by moving the virtual camera.

In Mandelbulber version 1.16, entering a negative value in the box causes the Glow 1 setting on Shaders 2 to generate a diametrically opposite color on its color wheel and sometimes other effects depending on other parameters.

Figure 2

Shaders 2 tab (figure 2):

Glow 1: This allows selection of one glow color. This can be used to generate a shade diametrically opposite to what’s selected on the color wheel, by giving the Glow setting on Shaders 1 a negative value, and may produce interesting effects with some parameter sets. If the Glow value is negative, dark shades become brighter, and light shades darker.

Glow 2: This permits selection of another simultaneous glow color. Unlike Glow 1, this does not produce diametrically reversed shades or brightness no matter the sign of the Glow value.

Background 1: 2: 3: These settings enable selection of the ambient colors of the fractal surface’s environment, with each of 1, 2, or 3 being a separate color. In some presets, defaults, and most examples I’ve seen, the default colors are (1) sky blue, (2) white, (3) blackish green. The perceived colors depend on the angle of the virtual camera to the fractal surface.

Depth of field (DOF) – Clicking on this setting allows simulation of virtual camera focus effects, with nearby or distant objects selectable using the slider.

DOF focus distance = 1.47911e-14: I find this the most useful value for updating this setting and bringing out foreground objects.

Figure 3

Engine tab(figure 3):

Interior mode: this lets you render a figure as a thin shell, revealing its inner structure, and I’ve noticed that this works really well with the ‘limits’ setting. Limits allows chopping up a figure by selecting which parts to remove based on the entered coordinates. Using these two settings together can make for interesting images, but also drastically slows rendering, especially with hybrid formula images.

Limits- Again, works well with ‘interior,’ or may be used without, showing a sliced portion of a figure without revealing inner detail.

x min: Begins as a negative value approaching zero in the 3D complex space, from the edge of the figure, left to right, assuming a virtual camera angle at x, y, and z of 0 degrees. A value of zero splits the figure to its core, with or without interior detail.

x max: The highest positive value occupied by the figure in the complex space. Assuming x, y, and z camera angles of 0 degrees, from the figure’s furthest right lowering toward the origin of the figure.

y min: starting as a negative value approaching zero in the complex space occupied by the figure. As with ‘x min,’ the value increases toward zero, and assuming camera angle of x, y, and z of 0 degrees, slices the figure from top to bottom toward its origin.

y max: Starting as a positive value, the largest distance from the origin occupied by the figure, lowering toward the origin. slices figure from bottom to origin/core., with a virtual camera angle of 0/0/0 degrees.

z min: Starting with a negative value, approaching zero in the complex space the figure occupies, assuming a virtual camera angle for x, y, & z of 0/0/0 degrees, this slices a cross-section of the interior structure facing the camera, and approaching the origin.

z max: Initially with a positive value, approaching zero, with view coordinates x, y & z being set at 0, this slices the figure from opposite side of the surface to the figure’s origin.