Well!! I was talking to Audre this morning over a nice hot expresso{yes the expresso was good} I was telling her about a FreeWare Program that is simple to use and pretty cool.. So I concluded telling her that I was going to post the FreeWare in the Product Showcase... and For the Mac'ers...I have invited a computer programer/Professor in the fractal business to join us for a day{actualy I have invited several}..But sometimes it is hard to get these people away from there work...So I'm hopeing that he will come and be with us soon.{he specializes in Mac...But he is a library of Congress}Ha.Ha....

very pretty...but i'm not so sure I've ever seen expresso look quite like that (duck)

so what program is this anyway?? and yup it's purty for sure grin

Speaking as a Mac'er, thank you! I found a program called Fractal Studio that says it does 3D fractal objects, but so far I haven't figured out exactly how?? Does your prof happen to know of an app that will? It doesn't even have to be free or shareware...I've reached the level of desperation that will allow me to buy one! (Oh--and better tell him about that trifling Math Impairment I suffer from too!)

Attached Link: http://www.fractaldomains.com/

Patricia, did you ever try Dennis C. DeMars' Fractal Domains http://www.fractaldomains.com/ ? I don't know anything about using it, but I do know the he got some info on orbit traps from Paul Carlson, several years ago, and incorporated it into his program. Orbit Traps are used in place of level set rendering for the color to escape in a psuedo 3D like manner. Such as stalks, bubbles, spheres, squares, triangles, etc. Orbit traps might also be known as a "filter" in some programs. The images Kelly posted to show how to layer images showed using orbit traps for giving form to each image she was merging. This program should be able to make similar images you can layer together in the same way. I haven't a clue as to how math intensive it is, but you can usually, in most any fractal program, start with default values and just zoom into and frame sections to use without having to learn the math. Here's whats said about it in the Fratal Art FAQ: Fractal Domains is a shareware program for Power Macintosh that generates fractal images. Fractal Domains generates color images of: Mandelbrot set and associated Julia sets Fractal formulas based on rational functions (ratio of two polynomials) Newton and Halley fractals based on arbitrary rational functions The program also contains extensive support for orbit traps and alternative criteria for determining colors (in addition to dwell count, color can be based on continuous potential, angular decomposition and distance estimation). Other features include editable color maps, a preview window, and the ability to spool very large images to disk (fractals much larger than available RAM may be generated). It was one of the first programs to incorporate anti-aliasing. The program uses double precision variables. Fractal Domains (http://www.fractaldomains.com/) Shareware, sources not available. FracPPC (http://www.fractaldomains.com/html/download.html#FracPPC) is a previous version which is now freeware (without sources).