The beauty of math

About fractal's

A fractal is some structure that, when one zooms in, indefinitely repeats itself. For instance the crystalline snowflake or the branches of a tree.

Lots of natural structures have more or less the same appearance as fractals. Since it only takes little code to create complex structures fractals have become quite popular in computer generated graphics. For instance the famous program FractInt or Lapre's LParser.

 

 

How it works (for the mathematically inclined).

This particular fractal (mandelbrot set) is calculated as follows the:

  • X-axe is the real part of an complex number.
  • Y-axe the imaginary part of an complex number.

Now this number is multiplied by itself until

  • the length of the resulting vector exceeds a predefined length or
  • the number of iterations exceeds a predefined number

Now we take the number of iterations and assign a color to it. In my applet the lower the number of iterations the darker the pixel. Or to put it in other words less dynamic give brighter pixels.

However for pixels where the number of iterations exceeds a predefined value no color is assigned in some browser that means black and in other white (yeap, that is not right, I should color them white).

Manual

 If you press the start button in the picture, the mandelbrot fractal renderer control window will appear. Here are some instructions how to use it.

It is best to first start with the default number in the control window. You might want to adjust the size of the window though. After you are ready press the

"start render" button. A new window should popup, which renders the selected area.

You can now:

  • Enter new numbers in the control window.
  • Select an area in a render window with your mouse.

When you select an area in a render window with your mouse the values are automatically updated in the control window.

When pressing the button labeled "render" in the control window a new fractal will be rendered.

The check box labeled "Keep Aspect Ratio" is to keep the window's height/width ratio the same as the selected area height/width ratio.

This Page is best viewed in 2304 colors or more.( So turn on 64k color mode ).

Statistic analisys of this page by

Downloading FracHunt

FracHunt is a Win95/Win98/NT4.0 application that is as easy to use as the applet above but has much more capabilities.

With FracHunt you can save your rendered picture as a windows background and of Version 1.1 as a POV-Ray heightfield.

It has much more coloring functions and fractal functions and comes with an extensive help.

FracHunt is careware which means that you cannot pay for it by money but you have to either do something good (not for yourself) or read the enclosed small article.

FracHunt runs on Win95/Win98/NT4.0 and probably Win2000.

OSNeeded updates
Win95All the recent updates, MSIE4.0 and higher
Win98Tested sucessfully with Win98 SE
NT4.0Need MSIE4.0, higher and SP6
Win2000Not tested, install HTMLHelp from the update site.

Download FracHunt as Zip file (1,749,437 bytes)

5 Dove Award on Completely FREE Software A great site with, high quality, Completely FREE Software.

Awarded 5/5 Stars On The File Transit ZDNet

Unzip the file and click on setup in the download directory. You must have an unzipper.

If you already got a version of FracHunt installed you might reduce your download time by downloading the update (146,935 bytes). Unzip it in the directory where you installed FracHunt (it will not update the version in the software add/remove applet).

List of changes
VersionChangesDate
1.0Initial version8 June 2000
1.1Fixed problem with directory locations12 June 2000
 Added POV-Ray heightfield Coloring 
 Made it work on NT4.0 SP6 
 Corrected and updated help pages 
 Extension check on filenames 
 Minor changes here and there 
1.11Very Minor changes for save/restore desktop15 June 2000
1.12Added email link in about box18 June 2000
 Fixed failed class registration 
 Check on illegal input values 
 Fixed yet another save/restore desktop problem 
1.13Made 'frm' and 'fra' files known to windows24 June 2000
 Render after setup if selected 
1.14Fixed bug in saving bitmaps15 october 2000
 Added set wallpaper 
 Updated docs a little 

Frachunt Alpha (preview of how it will look in 2003) Release

NOTE: Discontinued download no longer available, the old version still is of course

I am currently working on a new release of frachunt that is when I am not working on my mastermint game. You might have a peek how FracHunt might look in the future.

Note that lots of things do not work or are broke even if they worked in the stable release. One of the things more or less implemented are animations, if you really need that you could give it a try but be aware of the fact that it is just a snapshot while I am in the middle of changing the complete program.

To create animations you have to understand that you have to specify the first frame and the last frame. Of course also the output file, number of frames and frames per second have to be specified on the animate tab.

Example
Select newton raphson from the box on the first tab (called easy). Zoom in by making a small selection (drag the mouse) in the render window. Another window pops-up rendering the selected area. We are going to set the first window as the first frame and the second as the last. Right click on the first window ->Properties->Set Control. Right click on the second window->Properties->Set Animate. Now instead of render press animate. It will be written to the file on the animate tab.

You can reach pollux by EMail at address pollux@wxs.nl
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