How to render Mandelbulb-style 3D fractals

Question

I'm interested in experimenting with equations for 3D fractals (a la Mandelbulb). Does anyone know of a framework that will allow me to supply a 3-coordinate, Mandelbrot-style function, identifying a point as being contained or not contained within a set, and render the surface form of the resulting set in 3D?

Obviously, a solution that can use the GPU to do the processing would be better.

Answer 1

The 3D Mandelbulb Ray Tracer by subblue has been getting impressive results. It uses the GPU. It was used to produce this fly through. Maybe not as programmable as you'd like.

According to documentation, this project on Github may fit the bill: http://github.com/vain/GPUTracer. You can find more by Googling "mandelbulb raytracer github"