Print Page - mdz Mandelbrot Deep Zoom

The user of mdz may switch calculations to use arbitrary precision mathematics once double precision maths starts to break down. The amount of precision provided by the arbitrary maths routines starts at 80 bits, and can be increased to... A lot of precision.

The focus of mdz currently, is on producing traditional 2D images of the Mandelbrot set with the standard coloured bands. The colour palettes can be scaled and interpolated to smoothly cover hundreds of thousands of iterations, and basic anti-aliasing can also be used to create less pixelated images. The concept is based upon the idea that the Mandelbrot set is so rich in detail that no other colouring methods are actually required, just insight and patience ;-)

Here are two small images produced by mdz:

(http://jwm-art.net/mdz/gallery/glee.png)

(http://jwm-art.net/mdz/gallery/mandahll.png)

Some larger images can be found here:
http://jwm-art.net/mdz/gallery/ (http://jwm-art.net/mdz/gallery/)

The source code can be found here:
http://jwm-art.net/mdz/ (http://jwm-art.net/mdz/)

James Morris.

Cheers Tglad :)

A new version out right now, you heard it here first

mdz-0.0.3

*** NEW COMMAND LINE OPTIONS ***

+ settings logging to file or stdout as you zoom

+ render a settings file to a PNG image from the
command line without user interaction.

+ options to specify width, height, aspect ratio,
and anti-aliasing settings of the image.

*** BUGFIXES ***

+ fixed error in settings loading code caused by
a typo, and floating point values > 80 characters
in length.

+ minor modifications bringing the default image
inline with the default image of fractint.

+ the duplicate and zoom in new window menu options
are now working again.

http://jwm-art.net/mdz/mdz-0.0.3.tar.bz2 (http://jwm-art.net/mdz/mdz-0.0.3.tar.bz2)

New version of MDZ.

The major improvement in this release is a new multi-threaded rendering engine which almost doubles performance.

Other additions include a new single click super zoom button for point and zoom functionality which gets you deep into the set really quickly. A few tool tips too.

Does not sound like much, but I've been at it solidly for almost two weeks to get multi-threaded rendering working properly. I believe it is. Test it and let me know if it breaks.

http://www.jwm-art.net/mdz/ (http://www.jwm-art.net/mdz/)
http://www.jwm-art.net/mdz/mdz-0.0.4.tar.bz2 (http://www.jwm-art.net/mdz/mdz-0.0.4.tar.bz2)

Cheers,
James.

I get an error when I try to load a settings file from the terminal, but it works perfectly from the GUI.

Code:

$ mdz -l zoom1
Error in file:zoom1
error in xmin setting
Error in file:zoom1
Unknown section
Failed to load zoom1

You see, I would like to render my fabulous zoom. But I dont want to resize the GUI to 1280x800 :P

Quote from: stigomaster on January 30, 2010, 01:32:28 PM

I get an error when I try to load a settings file from the terminal, but it works perfectly from the GUI.

Code:

$ mdz -l zoom1
Error in file:zoom1
error in xmin setting
Error in file:zoom1
Unknown section
Failed to load zoom1

You see, I would like to render my fabulous zoom. But I dont want to resize the GUI to 1280x800 :P

Hi stigomaster, which version are you running? There's a new version since my last post here - 0.0.5b (make sure you get the b). I'm thinking that perhaps you're using an older version which had a bug which meant at really deep zooms, the coordinates where not read properly.

Also, could you post the mdz file too?

Cheers,
James.

What locale setting is your terminal using? I'm afraid though, I know very little about such things. Could you try a different terminal application? xterm if you're using gnome/kde/xfce terminals, etc.

I don't understand though, why it's outputting commas instead of periods (".") though - that's why I'm guessing it's a locale problem. And I don't really know what to do with my code, I don't really want a file created on a machine using one locale to be incompatible with mdz running on a machine in a different locale. Anyway, I've asked on stackoverflow and hopefully should get some responses, but if you can supply me any more information which might be helpful here it would be much appreciated. You can email me if you wish, and if you would not mind testing whatever fixes I might come up with.

Cheers,
James.

edit: what happens if you run the program after

Code:

export LC_ALL=C

The commas are surely a locale issue, yes. I'm running Norwegian (nn) Ubuntu, and in Norway the decimal point is a comma.

Quote from: jwm-art on January 30, 2010, 06:34:26 PM

edit: what happens if you run the program after

Code:

export LC_ALL=C

Exactly the same :)

But after manually exchanging the commas for periods, it opened as expected from the terminal.

Edit: I'd be happy to help testing, I think this is a nice program. :)

Ok, I might have a possible fix here, but it involves some minor code editing! I don't know if you know C, but the instructions assume not.

Open up the file main.c in the mdz-0.0.5b/src directory and at the very top is a group of #include<...> lines. Add the following line to them:

Code:

#include<locale.h>

Then, scroll down to around line 68 until you see:

Code:

int main(int argc, char** argv)

Immediately after the opening curly brace add the following line:

setlocale(LC_NUMERIC, "C");

so that it now looks like:

Code:

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
    setlocale(LC_NUMERIC, "C");
    program_name = argv[0];

Then at the terminal re-issue the make command (and sudo make install if you wish) and open up mdz and save a test file. Either inspect the file to check it's no longer using commas, or using mdz and the --render option in the terminal. BTW make will only recompile main.c and re-link. This is ok because it's the only file modified and well, I guess it will work...

Let me know how it goes and thanks for the feedback, it's invaluable :)

I made the changes,

Code:

made

and

Code:

sudo made install

(conjugation of terminal commands ftw) but there were no change in the results. Commas in the file and no loading from the terminal.

I have just installed and tested this program. Using this program it's really possible to render very deep zooms. Unfortunately the GMP library (and other high precision math libraries) is very slow. Making deep zooms is only for very patient people :).

I didn't have problems with localisation because I'm from Poland, and we also uses comas instead dots :D

Good work!

Quote from: Buddhi on January 31, 2010, 06:13:56 PM

Thanks Buddhi :) Yes you do have to be patient to zoom deep. Here's a tip though - use a 240x180 image size without anti-aliasing for deep zoom exploration and then increase it once you find a suitable image and add AA and then go climb a mountain or two.

The localisation problems won't manifest until you try rendering from the command line without bringing up the GUI.

Incidentally, can both of you try loading the settings files in the mdz-0.0.5b/gallery directory within the GUI and from the commandline?

This localisation thing is proving to be pretty troublesome.

From the GUI, all the files in gallery/ loads without problem, but the color scaling is set to a very low value (0.00000010) so it needs to be adjusted if you want to see more than a black dot on a coloured background. (This does not apply to mdz_banner, which needs no adjustment)
Rendering them from the terminal without GUI works even better, as no adjustment to the color scaling is required.

I eventually figured that the fix I posted earlier did not work because GTK does something with the locale too. Instead within the read/write code, the current locale setting is stored and then the locale is switched to "C" (ie some kind of standard basic system locale setting) and then restored once read/write is finished.

I've uploaded a new version for you to test:

http://jwm-art.net/mdz/mdz-0.0.6.tar.bz2 (http://jwm-art.net/mdz/mdz-0.0.6.tar.bz2)

I've done some basic testing after I installed the nn_NO.UTF-8 locale and it seemed to work.

Note that this new version will not read the files you've already saved in nn locale with commas for decimal points. This version always (hopefully) saves using dots for decimals places and always reads expecting dots for decimal places.

Again, let me know how it goes. Thanks.

James.

Thank you, it works fine now.

That is, the old files with comma can't even be loaded from the GUI now. But that is of course not a problem. I'll definitely be using this program a lot.
May I have some docs for the Palette Randomization function? I don't really understand what the different settings do.

I wish the palette randomizer had even more functionality! It's really nice to play with. Started me thinking what tools others use to design their palettes. The option to overlay the pattern only at the Nth stripe of the palette is cool. Makes it possible to combine very slow pulsating movement (which more seems like the color of the lighting is changing) with very fast (more local) small stripes. No easy way to make videos, which is a shame. But it really does add something to my Mandelbrot experience.

New version is 0.1.1 by the way. Found on https://github.com/jwm-art-net/MDZ (https://github.com/jwm-art-net/MDZ) and/or http://jwm-art.net/mdz/ (http://jwm-art.net/mdz/)

(http://i.imgur.com/ev75GVM.jpg)

@youhn you might be interested in pauldelbrots multi wave coloring method
although it is an algorithm which is not implemented by most programms, at least for ultrafractal there exists an implementation

when coloring mandelbrots the frequency often gets far to high and colors become repeated in the visible range, with the method
from pauldel new colors appear all the time ( if choosen correct params )

you can think of it as prime number scaled sine waves that become joined together to form the final color, based on the distance
estimation ;)

http://www.fractalforums.com/ultrafractal/multiwave-coloring-for-mandelbrot/?PHPSESSID=2a44ac2f9e37edcdc783c6013ec84fa7

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Fractal Software => Others => Topic started by: jwm-art on January 04, 2010, 01:28:50 PM