Greetings to this forum. I've been following along for some time now
by a daily
email, and
decided it was time to join in.

I've developed a high-performance fractal renderer for Macintosh computers
called
FractalWorks. (You can download it and try it yourself here:
http://web.mac.com/dchampney/Site/FractalWorks.html

Right now I'm working on extending it to create true 3D images which
are height
maps
using
the Distance Estimate Method (DEM) to create a height value. I then
create a 3D
"polygon
mesh" (which is like a sheet of tiny triangles stretched into a shape)
of my
plot. Finally, I
create a 2D perspective view of the 3D shape, including directional
lighting.

I'm quite happy with the results I'm getting so far.

Here are a couple of examples:

a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/77221448@N00/2306079561/"
title="Purple
Elephant Julia 3D by Duncan _C, on Flickr"><img
src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2053/2306079561_7ec05e0563_b.jpg"
width="1024"
height="622" alt="Purple Elephant Julia 3D" /></a

a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/77221448@N00/2320207256/"
title="B of F
Map
50 3D by Duncan _C, on Flickr"><img
src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3100/2320207256_45227a166b_o.jpg"
width="998"
height="690" alt="B of F Map 50 3D" /></a