Mandelbulb 3D fractal rendering software

Mandelbulb 3D (MB3D) Fractal Rendering Software

Mandelbulb 3D is a free software application created for 3D fractal imaging. Developed by Jesse and a group of Fractal Forums contributors, based on Daniel White and Paul Nylander’s Mandelbulb work, MB3D formulates dozens of nonlinear equations into an amazing range of fractal objects. The 3D rendering environment includes lighting, color, specularity, depth-of-field, shadow- and glow- effects; allowing the user fine control over the imaging effects.

After several years of dormancy, Andreas Maschke has begun updating Mandelbulb3D and releasing new versions. Andreas is the software developer behind the popular flame fractal program JWildfire.

MB3D has a devoted following of users worldwide, with on-line communities on Deviant Art and Facebook, where artists share their creations, as well as fractal formulas and software tips. The software is more user-friendly than most 3D fractal applications, and a number of tutorials are available on line. It is designed for a Windows environment. To use Mandelbulb 3D in a Mac environment, you will need to use a Windows emulator such as Wine (free) or Parallels (purchase)

Download Mandelbulb3D V1.99.33 (Windows) here current as of 4/2020 – Developed by Andreas Maschke

  • All recent versions of Mandelbulb3D released by Andreas Maschke as well as features, news, and support can be found here.

Legacy versions:

Mandelbulb 3D version 1.9.1 (Windows) here originally posted 3/2016

Mandelbulb 3D version 1.8.9 (Windows) here originally posted 5/2014

Comments 21

  1. I downloaded mb3d on my PC windows 7 laptop and the program runs very slow. What are the requirements for this program.
    I have 2gb of dram, if I upgrade to 4GB will the program run faster?

    1. I have run the program on a variety of older machines with far less memory! Of course everything runs better and faster with more memory, this program does not have a minimum memory requirement! A few things you can do to speed things up a bit is on the “Internal” tab, set the threadcount to 2 and check Auto detect at start! Set your iterations to a lower number. under 200 and don’t run other memory hungry programs like games at the same time!

  2. Thanks for making this software freely available. The quality is superb. You guys are awesome (I cannot emphasize it enough).

  3. Hi, I’ve tried to install the Mac version Madelburb 3D on my Mac (Mac OS 10.8.5), but the program does not launch.
    Are there any Mac users that have succeeded in installing Madelburb? Or does anybody have an advice to give on how to install it properly?
    Thank you very much.

    Merlin.

      1. Not so much. It acts like it’s opening but doesn’t. Maybe it’s because my system is old. I see no system requirements anywhere.

  4. Hello! What a wonderful product and project! I am so grateful to you for making this amazing project available to us all!

    Alas, I cannot save or render, but I can save snapshots. I continually get an error : (mac)
    access violation at address 429CD92 in module ‘comdlg32.dll

    I hope I am in the right place to post this issue!

    But seriously, amazing, stellar and compelling work. I am using this to create textures for my 3D objects and no other application has the power of Mandelbulb!

  5. Looking to generate a looped stereo 3d mandelbulb video to be used as wallpaper for an Oculus Rift app.

    The video will be mapped to the skybox/enviroment cube as simultaneous texture for each interior cube wall.

    Here is the problem: how can I ensure that the edges of the video tessellate symmetrically? I would like the overall experience to be “inside” a seamless looping mandelbulb.

    Not even sure what kind of maths I would employ. Intuitively, this is probably very easy to do with your software, but how?

  6. I can’t get the OS X version working with the latest OS X version (yosemite 10.10.2). It just won’t start. Can anyone help?

    1. Sorted out the problem on my MacBook Pro: It had to do with my graphics cards (it has two chips, one for energy saving and one for using games or 3d-tools. Once I’ve disabled the dynamic switching between the both graphic-chips and rebooted, I’ve managed to get it running.

      On my retina Imac it works out of the box under yosemite.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *