Has anyone sen this sort of 3D fractal image?

Didn't you know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That's why eyedrops and rose-colored glasses are needed.

I just pulled this image out of the mmf folder of UF using the Solid 3D Quaternions formula and the lighting UCL, but I don't know anything else about these things

You can make them in Fractal Explorer. Never messed with them because, quite frankly, I don't have a clue what they are. I suppose if you had a lot of patience, you could manipulate the parameters into something cool. Never had that patience with them. Hope this helps.

I had a look around the Fractal community/gallery. I had not noticed any images from the "Quanterion" style of fractals and was curious. Thank you for your time.

Didn't you know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That's why eyedrops and rose-colored glasses are needed.

If it helps to think of them this way:
Take a fractal, often a Julia, then run it through a series of parameter changes, so your frac changes its shape, so you have a sequence of still images. Then, mentally 'connect the dots' of the outside edge of each still image. The quaternions are sort of the 3d shell that results when all those dots are connected.
Or to put it another way: If you were to take a cross-section slice of a quat, you would end up with a traditional fractal (often a Julia).
Many folks don't do them because they do take up so much computing power--essentially you have an near-infinite number of fractals being computed for just the one resulting pic.

RosemaryR
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"This...this is magnificent!"
"Oh, yeah. Ooooo. Aaaaah. That's how it starts.
Then, later, there's ...running. And....screaming."

Additional stuff: If you have KPT5, their Frax4D plugin shows best the connection between the base fractal and the quat (it's interactive, so as you change the fractal, the quat changes in near real-time). Here's a screen capture of the two pertinent windows for that plugin. As they would say on a SAT test; circle:sphere as fractal:quaternion The only parameter that can be changed for a circle is it's radius. Thus as you take cross-section slices of a sphere, you see circles of various radii. With a fractal, you have several more parameters that can change, so the quaternion's cross section cuts can change much more dramatically.

RosemaryR
---------------------------
"This...this is magnificent!"
"Oh, yeah. Ooooo. Aaaaah. That's how it starts.
Then, later, there's ...running. And....screaming."

Attached Link: http://www.hypercomplex.org/quasz.htm

Terry Gintz has just recently released a full version of his 'QuasZ" software and it is available at the above link. Check out the Cosine's gallery here for some examples of that programs possibilities. FractalViZion also makes good Quaternions.

Fractals will always amaze me!

Thanks for the plug, Tres. :-) I love quaternions, but they are indeed demanding. It takes me a lot of time to get what I want, then, because they are 3D instead of 2D, they take a long time to render. Having said that, let me say I'm talking about maybe 15 to 30 minutes on my 2.6 HHz Northwood, while I typically render a big complicate XD image overnight. So render time shouldn't be a deciding factor. As far as ease of use, right now QuaSZ is easier than FE. But Arthur is working on a new version, and the quat generator will definitely be improved. And of course, FE is freeware. I think, as with any art, it comes down to doing what you like. Feel free to send me an IM or email if you'd like to discuss either QuaSZ or FE further. Check out the galleries at http://hypercomplex.org/fractals.htm The URL for QuaSZ is http://mysticfractal.com/ for FE it's http://www.eclectasy.com/Fractal-Explorer/

Thanks for the info. My first attempt has been posted to the fractal gallery, "Diving into the Chaos Nebula". It consist of two different quaternions blended into one image. Cosine, I've looked at your work... pretty cool...

Didn't you know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That's why eyedrops and rose-colored glasses are needed.

I was going to start a new thread to ask this, but I figured why not ask it here? QuaSZ has the capability to export as VRML, which as far as I can see is the only method for moving the quaternion into Bryce. However, if you try this, you will get a very blocky and unattractive lump of a quaternion. Perhaps there are other programs, but is there any good ways of putting a quaternion into Bryce? I know POV-ray makes quaternions, but I have no experience with it, and have screwed various things up in that program.