Awesome fractal artwork.

[Puke]

There are a lot of them!

Fractal World Gallery

[Kat Kanning]

I understood that fractals were generated from a mathematical formula.  Some of those, like this one:



it's hard to believe that was from a formula.  You know anything more about these?

[dalebert]

it's hard to believe that was from a formula.  You know anything more about these?

It looks formula-generated to me but I don't really see a much of a fractal nature to it. I was a graphics specialist in college and we had to program ray tracers and then generate a sample image to demonstrate the different shapes we had programmed it to handle. Ray tracers were one of the first really realistic compute rendering techniques. You use formulas to shoot a beam of light out of the viewers eye and treat the computer screen as a window into your "world". Then you let it hit objects and calculate backwards to a light source or even multiple light sources. Sometimes it never reaches a light source and you know that pixel should be shaded. Then you add ambient light. Everything in our image was based on a few lines of code in a file that was read in by the program and yet it could generate some really elaborate images. Believe it or not, a sphere was one of the easiest things mathematically while a plane was one of the most difficult. Ray tracers aren't very efficient though. The simplest design required you to check the ray against every single object in your world. You could do a few tricks to shorten that process but even with those, it was slow compared to later rendering techniques.

Still, things like pyramids, spheres, orbit patterns, shading, and so forth are easy to generate mathematically.

Fractals, as I understand it, are patterns formed by random number generators and then creating an image based on the results. There's on Most of the other images look fractal to me but this one just looks like a repeated pattern. It could be that the placement of the "planets" is based on a random formula, but then it looks like they just repeated the same pattern. Notice that inside each of the orbs is another solar system which may or may not match the larger ones. There may even be solar systems inside those in the formula but they're not big enough to show up in the image.

The cool thing about fractals is that they're technically random but they show repeating patterns on a large scale. That's true of random numbers in general. You do something random on a small scale and it seems completely unpredictable, but on a large enough scale and it starts to fit a more and more predictable pattern. If you roll a six-sided die one time, the result is very random. But if you roll it a thousand times, and can chart the results of those rolls ahead of time, and the variation in reality will not stray far from my prediction of what you will roll. Makes you think about things like evolution in a whole new light. Combine that with naturally occurring shapes in nature like spheres (soap bubbles) and hexagons (honeycombs) and what not, which are all based on math, and it really makes you think. I'm really not a religious person but if I think the closest I ever got to believing in God was when I proclaimed that God is Math.

[Beth221]

wow!  thanks, now I have a neat background!

[Ron Helwig]

This should create a fractal:

Code Select Expand


HAI

BTW this program generates the data for a Sierpinski Gasket
BTW http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierpinski_triangle

I HAS A Count ITZ 500
I HAS A CornerList BTW list of 3 triangle vertex coordinates
BTW need to set the values of CornerList[1-3]
I HAS A PlotList BTW list of coordinates to plot
I HAS A Spot BTW current coordinate
I HAS A Corner BTW the random corner to average Spot with

BTW generate first current coordinate
LOL 1 IN MAH Spot IS SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 1 IN MAH 1 IN MAH CornerList AND 1 IN MAH 1 IN MAH CornerList
LOL 2 IN MAH Spot IS SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 2 IN MAH 1 IN MAH CornerList AND 2 IN MAH 1 IN MAH CornerList

IM IN YR LOOP
BTW randomly choose a corner
LOL Corner IS SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 1 AND 3

BTW average the Spot coordinates with the chosen corner's coordinates
I HAS A Temp
LOL Temp R 1 IN MAH Spot UP 1 IN MAH Corner IN MAH CornerList
LOL 1 IN MAH Spot R Temp OVARZ 2
LOL Temp R 2 IN MAH Spot UP 2 IN MAH Corner IN MAH CornerList
LOL 2 IN MAH Spot R Temp OVARZ 2

LOL 1 IN MAH Count IN MAH PlotList R 1 IN MAH Spot
LOL 2 IN MAH Count IN MAH PlotList R 2 IN MAH Spot
KTHX

KTHXBYE


http://lolcode.com/

[Beth221]

charlie brown's teacher. 

[Puke]

I'm sure that some of the pieces have artistic elements thrown in.
I will never have to search for backgrounds again. I just wish some where higher resolution.

[Beth221]

why do i feel smarter after looking at the art??

[Puke]

why do i feel smarter after looking at the art??

Umm....I have no idea. I just like pretty and shiny things. 

[Ron Helwig]

charlie brown's teacher. 

Nope, Charlie Brown's teacher's cat 

[K. Darien Freeheart]

I'm not surprised one bit that Ron is also amused by lolcode.

KTHXBYE!