photo comix: what do you mean by making it transparent before transform? you mean there's a way to do that inside m3d? i had so much problem with the colouring and shading in these, rendering nice looking fractals is no problem at all, but how to give them the right colours and lighting seems like a thing i could spend years before i learned! and processing them in gimp is not exactly easy either, it's even harder than photo manipulation.
erisian: thank you for the encouragement
! i understand using someone else's parameters is the logical way to start, but i can't get myself to do it because it feels like i'm not doing my own thing then. funny, because i never feel like this when i use other people's photos for a collage or texturing or something, but starting off from someone else's fractal felt entirely wrong. i felt like a three year old who wants to get dressed by herself without grown up help or interference
.
molly: thanks, that's what i was thinking
. i just have to learn how to make things look a bit shiny first.