Michael Hogg - Software


	Overview

	GCE

	Marble Challenge

	ASCIIroids

	PSD (Second Life)

	Gravity Bubbles

	FractalNet

	EcoSim

	Cosmic Dust

	LandMesh

	Imagencrypter

	Foxy Detector

	MacDiff

	Asteroid Belt

	Matrix Attack

	Solar Swarm

	OS X Terminal

	Tools

	Names :-)

FractalNet

$A fractal generated by FractalNet$

FractalNet is a distributed fractal renderer I wrote, which generates images and videos of the Mandelbrot and Julia sets. It consists of about 530 lines of C code for fast iteration of the Mandelbrot equation, and about 3,900 lines of Java code for the remainder of the functionality. Java Native Interface (JNI) is used to connect the C and Java code together.

Some of FractalNet’s features include:

Image output in lossless PNG format.
HD (high-definition 1280x720) video output in QuickTime format, using QuickTime for Java.
High levels of anti-aliasing for super-smooth images.
Smooth gradient colouring (instead of separate regions of uniform colours), using a fully-renormalised fractional iteration count.
A simple “fractal browser” (click here for a screenshot), which allows a user to easily explore the fractals, and view the Julia set corresponding to a particular point in the Mandelbrot set. Clicking on a point centres the image on that point, and zooms in/out if specified. Changes in the colour scheme are updated in real-time, without needing to re-render the fractals.
Generation of videos, using the following techniques:
- Panning around a fractal.
- Zooming in/out of a fractal.
- Rotating a fractal.
- Colour cycling.
- Transitioning from one colour scheme to another.
- Morphing a Julia set, by tracing a path through the Mandelbrot set.
- A Google Earth style of parabolic flight path between two locations in a fractal – the “camera” zooms out from the initial location, until both the initial and final locations can be seen in the same shot, and then zooms in to the final location.
Distributed generation of videos, using Java RMI. A master computer and an unlimited number of slave computers are connected together using a TCP/IP network, and the master uses the slaves to render specific frames of the video. If the slaves return their frames in the wrong order (ie. because one slave is faster than another), the master rearranges the frames before writing them to the final video.
Use of a plain text configuration file, which stores all the parameters for an image or video in a user-friendly, human-readable format.

Images

Please click on the tabs below to view the available images. Click on a thumbnail to view the full-size image.

These images are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. You are free to share, copy, distribute and transmit the images, but: you must attribute the images to me; you may not use these images for commercial purposes; you may not alter, transform, or build upon these images.

The full-size images are displayed using Lytebox.

Videos

Please click on the tabs below to view the available videos.