END OF AN ERA, FRACTALFORUMS.COM IS CONTINUED ON FRACTALFORUMS.ORG

A simple seahorse tail, amped up with an interesting layer. There are two logmapped smoothed-iteration layers, one for the lowest and highest iterations and one for everything in between; the third layer is a multiplied-on greyscale layer colored by the squared distance of the closest point in the orbit to -0.759232 + 1.237814i. This is what adds the 3D "billowing" effect to the fractal. The first of the three layers mentioned uses the same gradient as the second but is transparent for most of the range of iterations seen in this image; its purpose is to prevent the "billowing" layer from making the high-iteration areas dimmer or too noisy, by simply crossfading them to what the second layer looks like without the "billowing" layer multiplied on.

Freely redistributable and usable subject to the Creative Commons Attribution license, version 3.0.

Detailed statistics:

Name: Conch
Date: January 6, 2010
Fractal: Mandelbrot
Location: Seahorse Valley
Depth: Shallow (8 decimals)
Min Iterations: 35
Max Iterations: 2812
Layers: 3
Anti-aliasing: 3x3, threshold 0.0, depth 2
Preparation time: 5 minutes
Calculation time: 17 minutes (2.5GHz dual-core E5200)

It is all in the details !!!