UKH

Posted in this forum in the hope it gets more views.

Hope everyone has had a wonderful Christmas.

I'm looking for a link to a good Mandelbrot Set screensaver, I'm not tech savvy so haven't got a clue how to generate my own even though the equation is easy to find (not that I would understand that either).

I would love this as a screensaver.

Any help/guidance appreciated.

Have a happy new year.

https://www.google.com/search?q=mandelbrot+screensaver&oq=mandelbrot+sc...

Q: What does the B stand for in Benoit B Mandelbrot?

A: Benoit B Mandelbrot. 

I know how to search, it's my fault for not being clearer, I should have asked for a recommendation for a good Mandelbrot screensaver(will edit OP to reflect)(edit: Bah, I can't seem to edit OP now )

Wasn't meant sarcastically. There seem to be lots of them, mostly free. What one person Iikes or wants might not be what someone else likes or wants.

No, I know it wasn't a sarcastic comment, so apologies if it appeared I thought it was.

The ones I've seen in the search(and there are quite a few even in each link) aren't very smooth when running, and don't appear to be as good as the video's of the set on, for example, youtube.

That’s probably because it’s expensive to compute on the fly. Without a decent implementation it will be a bit clunky. I remember coding it on my Atari in the 90s and leaving it running overnight, to find it had done about 2/3 of the screen..

Fractint used to be be go to app for generating fractals. Its still out there, free to download. It allows you to fiddle and froblicate the algorithms and zoom in and out at will.

If one were some sort of anarchist, and wanted to steal from those people who are making all those nice NFT's. (Perhaps ironically pointing out the futility of selling a mathematically generated image.) Once could go to:

https://opensea.io/collection/fractint-art-collection

You click on an image and do a save as... Set these as your screen saver pics. Gloat in the knowledge that you are now an international art thief. Perhaps drink a Martini, in your underground lair, as you think of the gullible people you've secretly swindled out of a jpeg.

Not exactly the screensaver you asked for, apologies, however I have spent quite a few happy hours using a previous version of this, which generates fantastic fractal pictures. People cleverer than me then put the images through their layering photo editors and produce great art.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/apophysis-av/

Apparently this version does 3D. I foresee a few more hours coming up now I've downloaded the latest version...

I had never heard of the Mandelbrot Set before seeing your post, but coincidentally, Netflix has just suggested I watch ‘The Colours Of Infinity’ - a documentary about this very thing.

I’m sure you have already seen the film but thought it was worth a mention just in case!

How long have you been waiting to tell that joke?

I've had maybe 3 opportunities in the last 15 years to tell it and I've seized them all with both hands.

You Cantor shouldn't miss such an opportunity

I'm pleased to have been of service

Thanks for this.

Q. How do I open the files? what would you recommend?

Thanks.

Slightly off topic but there's a documentary about Mandelbrot (might have gone now) on Netflix and its a great example of how a human brain can operate so far outside what us mere mortals would consider 'thinking' that it might as well be a different species.

He describes how he has a natural ability to visualise complex equations and see each part as shapes, with the answer being the area where each part intersects. I might have badly paraphrased that, but I cant even begin to understand it.

And he seems like a nice bloke too

Ok, so the simplest way to generate a fractal is to choose File / Random Batch from the menu, or press Ctrl-B and click on the image names in the list on the left.

When you see one you like, you could do a screen grab, but a better way is to choose Flame / Render Flame from the menu, alter the filename and image size if required, and press Start. By default, the images go in the root directory of the app, so you may want to create a Pictures directory to store them in, or whatever.

Choose View / Editor to get the Transform Editor displayed, and there you can drag resize and rotate the triangles that represent the current equations to change the display. The Mutation tool is also pretty cool.

I've really only scratched the surface of what you can do, but have managed to make some quite nice images:

Back in the 1990s I used to be really into creating fractals as personal computers became powerful enough to perform it. Writing a program to draw the Mandelbrot set is a good school level introduction to complex numbers. Amazingly, the code will fit into about a screenful or less of code in your favourite language and would make a good educational project.

We started with Fractint as mentioned above which was a creative way of getting good images of 486 era computers which lacked floating point units. I used to converse with the developer of XaoS which could perform real time zooming which I see is now resurrected in a JavaScript webpage.

https://xaos-project.github.io/

You hold down the mouse on the edge of the set and it slowly zooms in.

I have found and downloaded a fractal generator called Mandelbulb. first impression is that it is relatively easy to use once familiar with the basics, which is something for me to look at another day, alongside YouTube tutorials.