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I wonder if folks interested in presenting 3D fractals with real world materials have heard of the technique in the subject line.
I happened to see a paper (pdf) recently titled "Materializing 3D Quasi-Fuchsian Fractals":
www.scipress.org/journals/forma/pdf/2101/21010019.pdf

There is one photo in the paper (about 2/3 of the way down the document) which shows an example of this type of 3d rendering.  Essentially a laser is used to create precisely located fractures in a solid piece of glass.  I would imagine the cost is quite high to produce these "Images" in glass.

I suppose some folks here may already be aware of this technique.  However, long time lurkster that I am, I don't recall seeing this "controlled damage" technique mentioned here earlier. :)
So I brought the subject up because I'm certain the it would be of interest to people already experimenting with "printing" 3d fractals, at least for future reference.

Excellent paper, thanks for the link! I had never heard about this Laser Induced Damage technique.

http://www.bathsheba.com/crystal/
 :dink:

Excellent...and quite affordable. She's everywhere ;)

I saw the paper a while ago and didn't search for other info, so thanks to knighty for doing that "homework" for me.  ;D
It appears that bathsheba has some acquaintance with shapeways too, which is mentioned at the bottom of this page:
http://bathsheba.com/bio/tusk/

Maybe in the future a way to melt rather than fracture glass will be developed so that better curved surfaces can be formed, although I would imagine that's pretty far down the line.  Maybe not though - 3D printing seems to have developed at a fairly rapid pace.