Mandelbulb 3D ~ Mastering 3D Navi

Well I'm sorry to suck you in by that devious title! I haven't mastered anything, but I did finally put together all the useful advice given in comments from a recent journal (haltenny.deviantart.com/journa…) I wrote on navigating with the 3D Navi tool. The funny thing is I brought up my solution to navigating at Fractal Forums back in May and FractKali responded with a much better solution than mine, and I either didn't read it thoroughly or simply didn't understand it. So I want to make it clear that I am simply passing along advice from the comments I've received here and at Fractal Forums. I just want to organize and better explain the procedure in case any have missed some of the comments.


I almost always offer this disclaimer. I readily claim that I am far from an expert with MB3D. If beaten over the head with information enough times, it eventually seeps thorough the cracks in my skull and worms it's way into my brain pan. Proof that I am not an expert is obvious by the convoluted and tedious solution to navigating I gave in the past journal. The following solution is much more elegant and just simple.


So here we are once again, stuck in a piece. You have navigated to a point with the 3D Nav tool and are stuck. Sometimes you can still move left or right or up or down to a certain extent, but not always. And now you find that you can't move forward (zoom or walk in) or backward (zoom or walk out). At this point, most everyone knows you can expand the nav box by clicking the little arrow located in the bottom right corner of the 3d nav window. When you do this more options become available, one of the most important (concerning our problem) being, 'fixed zoom and steps'. This has been beaten into our heads on many occasions so I'm just as sure that many know of this as well.

So if we select this box (click on it and a check mark will appear) it will allow us to once again move freely about in the nav window.  (I always reload my parameters into the nav window after selecting the 'fixed zoom and steps' box, just in case I've made some changes I've forgotten about.) You can now walk in our out to your hearts content. However it does raise several other issues. The reason we are stuck in the first place is because we are either inside a structure or running up against a structure when we tried to move in or out. With the 'fixed zoom and steps' box selected, when you 'walk' you actually are cutting your way into or out of the structures that have you trapped. You may not want to do this as it will spoil your current view in your piece.

Here's the part I didn't understand or realize until a week or so ago. I can be thick at times, and I noticed on occasion an extra set of zoom controls sometimes appear in the 3d nav window directly below and to the left of the image, but I didn't know why they were sometime there, and sometimes were not there. Well I rarely used the 'fixed zoom and steps' function so it didn't occur to me that selecting 'fixed zoom and steps' is what triggers the extra zoom controls. Below is an image of the nav controls. Circled in red is the control that expands the nav box so more options are available. Circled in blue is the 'fixed zoom and steps' box which you want to select if you are stuck. Circled in green are the extra zoom buttons that appear if the 'fixed zoom and steps' box is selected.





If you are stuck, do this:
1) Select the 'fixed zoom and steps' box by clicking on it.
If you want to ONLY zoom in or out, do the following:
2) Use the extra zoom buttons to navigate in or out, (buttons circled in green) NOT THE WALK CONTROLS!
If you want to cut further into your piece:
3) Use the walk buttons to cut into your piece.

Here's some more info to absorb. If you select the 'fixed zoom and steps' and then try to zoom in with the extra zoom buttons and it doesn't work, then you are probably already zoomed way in. In this case you can do one of two things. You can still cut your way in by using the walk controls, but obviously this changes the looks of your piece. If you still want to zoom in without changing your image or cutting, first ZOOM OUT with the extra zoom buttons, then WALK in by cutting until you get back to the view you had before zooming out. Once you get to that point, then you can zoom in with the extra zoom buttons and with no cutting.

Another thing that many are aware of is that if your image disappears while you are zooming in, then you can raise the 'far plane' setting' at the lower left corner of the nav window. Some people don't realize you can use this in reverse as well. (Obviously) If the background of your image is too busy looking or you can't seem to make the background fade or fog up by using the depth slide in the ambient lighting, then you can lower the far plane setting in the nav window.

And once again I want to give credit to all those who commented and gave tips in the previous Journal. By looking over those comments, I hope I've clarified as well as simplified using the nav window to a certain extent! booyah!