Here is new idea for transforming the Mandelbrot set into all kinds of 3d translations: (probably not a new idea but if i say new it sounds more interesting
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Visualise the black volume inside the mandelbrot set, and imagine it was a sea, with a rivers stemming from all the recesses around the edges flowing to the centre of the sea along mathematical lines. the rivers merge together and form valleys in hierarchy, which can be traced as a tree shape.
It would be a Mandeltree with lots of spirals, lines leading to smaller mandels, etc.
A formula that determines the lines in the middle of all the black recesses that merges to the nearest other line that it approaches.
You could rotate the mandelbrot set "gradients" around the tree-lines of gravity, so that each structure in the mandelbrot+mandeltree would be a rotation about itself and also around the next branches of the river under it according to the mass of the river.
Else, you could take the complex 2d tree, and transform it into the third dimension, so that the same number of branches and spirals exist, except that each branch deviates also by an angle into 3d.
You could generate many entirely new branches, for example just stemming from the forks, into the z axis, so that each new branch looked like the branch from a fork next to it or from the other end of the tree somewhere. Differently from a real rotation, it should keep the pointiness, spirals and details of the mendelbrot in 3d.
If it is possible to have a complex mandeltree structure in 2/3 dimensions, it could be possible to apply volume to the branches using rounded grandients, else to reapply the original outside coloring gradient data to have some kind of 3d structures with the same shapes as mandlbrote but in 3d?
is it even possible to make tree structures based on the mandelbrot?
EDIT-by chance here is a great video that shows the zoom to get to the image underneath and its location in the mendelbrot set:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread542140/pg1