The Mandelbrot Explorer
The purpose of this application is to let you explore the Mandelbrot Set and
play with the colours used, bringing it to its full beauty.
Here's a short hotlist of how you can interact directly with the image:
- The mousewheel zooms in and out
- A left click will center on the point you clicked.
- left click and drag to move your viewpoint
Yes, the palette settings are rather weird...
The Mandelbrot function returns a simple integer value, that value being the
number of iterations required to meet its end condition. It's what we do with
that value that builds the colours displayed.
In this interface, we pass those counts into a sine function, giving us nice
oscillating waves to build colours with. For each primary colour, the following
function is applied:
c(n) = ⌊127.5 + 127.5 * sin((periodScale * 2πn / defaultPeriod) + offset + masterOffset + stagger)⌋
- defaultPeriod is the count range required to cycle the angle through a full 2π radians (360°). If you find there is too much noise - caused by having too wide a variety of return values from the Mandelbrot function - increasing this value will smooth things out.
- periodScale is a multiplier applied to the angle for that primary. These are adjusted in the "Period" tab. Adjusting these can provide a much wider variety of beautiful (and ugly) colours.
- offset adjusts the angle by a certain amount, offsetting that primary from the others by the given amount. This can be adjusted in the "Offset" tab.
- masterOffset is the same as offset, but applied to all primaries. Also found in the offset tab.
- stagger is an offset that is applied to the given primary for every second colour, adding a striped look to the results. Adjustable under the "Stagger" tab.
Export as JSON
The parameters for each rendering are stored as a JSON object, describing
the rendering itself, as well as the palette configuration. The text area
below contains the parameters used for this rendering.
For more information on how the palette configuration is used, click on the
(?) button in the palette section on the right.