The next update is taking a bit longer than I wanted but that’s because I’m rendering most of the Mandelbulbs again with a better quality whenever possible (or when it’s worth it) after I got this new 28″ monitor, which helps a lot to find small issues on images, and also I’m trying to use the Monte Carlo rendering on them with that same definition (and it takes a long time depending on the image), some fractals don’t really change or improve with it but some get interesting new features regarding the lights, shadows and textures (and even the original colours). I’ll keep these high resolution images to myself as usual but will post the smaller versions as usual.

Some of the original Mandelbulbs were slightly edited/tweaked to fix these small things, and a couple more images always appear from some of these tweaks. That’s the problem with fractals, mostly with these in 3D: you start exploring an image and you end up in another world with a zillion new images. Also, some of the old images while being fixed look better if tweaked to something a bit more interesting, complex, or just more colourful. I think I will also try some extra tweaks using the mutation tab to see if something else appears that is as interesting as the source image. Sometimes it makes some images that are too complex adding unnecessary formulas and parameter values and even crashes a lot, but it’s a fun thing to do. I’m also learning some new techniques that I might use in future images… one nice thing I just learned is that Mandelbulb 3D has this “History” folder where it keeps sort of a backup of ALL your images parameter files (the files are just 2k in size anyway). Sometimes when it crashes it can be useful to try to restore something you were working on right before the crash. I didn’t browse everything yet but for sure there might be something there that was “lost” before a crash (which happens quite frequently…) that might be recoverable. I found that I had some sub-folders there dating back from 2019… unfortunately it just had the default image. Sometimes if you didn’t make any changes to the default fractal or didn’t save anything it just keeps track of when you open the software (date, time and name of the file if saved are all included in these entries), and saves these backups with the default fractal.

I’ll be away from the computer where I make all that stuff for a couple weeks, so there won’t be any updates until maybe next month. I’m actually back, but not really good enough to update anything yet… the site isn’t getting too much attention anyway…