Please try this... new 3d mandelbrot formula, animations included

[Syntopia]

Good to know... thanks again!  I didn't understand the continuous mode before, but I did notice the added sand with the change in "detail" control.  Will try again tonight.

The sand-stuff is usually because the DE-function has problems in some regions. You could try lowering the FudgeFactor in the RayTracer tab, but there is no guarantee.

As Eiffie mentioned the latest Fragmentarium build has some support for Non-DE rendering - it can be found here: http://www.fractalforums.com/3d-fractal-generation/rendering-3d-fractals-without-distance-estimators/msg54477/#msg54477

[knighty]

You can also try a larger bailout value (say 10 to 100) to reduce the sand effect.

[DarkBeam]

It looks a lot like Rucker's brot, the oldest formula ever. Ages ago Makin rendered it 
Don't waste your time fiddling with angles, somebody made general formulas already!

[Fred Decker]

I'm very familiar with Rucker's solution.  I've seen (and implemented) both the original Rucker formulas, and the optimizations.  Both of those give different results.  I'll show the differences at some point, I've already got them all running side by side in mathematica.  The way he identifies the angles and rotations are different, and it makes a real difference in the escape iteration counts, and therefore shape.  The general shape is similar in a way, but definitely not the same.