.5 Gigapixel Mandelbrot

[stardust4ever]

24.7Mb 8-bit PNG @23040x23040, Because bigger is always better!  

It's so big, you can literally zoom in and out with Windows photo viewer. I wanted to do a full binary gigapixel at 32768x32768, but for some reason, FX can't save bitmaps larger than 512mb!!!


Deviation page with link to full download:
http://stardust4ever.deviantart.com/art/5-Gigapixel-Mandelbrot-378165450

Ginormous .5 Gigapixel Mandelbrot render, 23040x23040 pixels square. The resolution is not random but a fairly well rounded number achieved from multiplying 360 x 64 and just barely under the 512 megabyte bitmap limit. I had issues attempting to save bitmaps with more than 512 binary megapixels, which resulted in corrupted file. Rendered in Fractal Extreme with Panzerboy's "Smooth Shading" Plugin. The idea was to create an Mandelbrot render so large you could zoom into it with a basic photo viewer, at least enough to see most major features in the set. You can literally see every major bulb with dozens of visible minibrots. Not recommended unless you've got a 64-bit machine with ample of RAM. Loads fine in Windows 7/8 photo viewer, and you can zoom in and out freely. Since it won't load in any web browser I've tried (IE, Firefox, or Chrome), I'm providing a direct download link to the 8-bit PNG image.

I'm releasing it under a creative commons license.

[Dinkydau]

How long did this take to render?

[stardust4ever]

About 4 minutes on my quad core AMD laptop. Fractal Extreme uses float calculations at low zoom levels which is very fast, but I used a high bailout value and had "guessing" turned off. I think the majority of the render time was spent processing the black Mandelbrot. Fractal Extreme was also using a little over a gigabyte of RAM too. You'll probably want about 2 gigs of free memory to load the PNG file since even though it's an 8-bit image, the software is probably using 24- or 32-bit color space to display it.

[Dinkydau]

It uses 2,7 GB of RAM here with the default windows 7 image viewer.

[simon.snake]

Isn't this an example of a conversation I started way back (last year probably) wondering what the record was for the largest image of the Mandelbrot ever produced?  I recall then the replies I got saying this wasn't a good idea as probably most of the image would consist of black space.

Still, good effort!

[cbuchner1]

You could render 4 quadrant views of that Mandelbrot and stitch them back together in an image format that does not have such a restrictive size limitation.

[stardust4ever]

You could render 4 quadrant views of that Mandelbrot and stitch them back together in an image format that does not have such a restrictive size limitation.

Unfortunately, that would be difficult to do with fractal Extreme because it only defines the center point as a coordinate. Zoom depth is in log base 2, so it would be extremely difficult to render an image with exact corner coordinates which would be necessary for piecewise assembly. Technically, for images with an even number of pixels, the center coordinate is the upper left pixel of the center 2x2 square. Fractal Extreme renders a maximum of 30,000x30,000 pixels, but it's only with the recent update that I'm able to save FX files this large without corrupting the iteration data. FYI, Fractal Extreme does have a "poster" option, but it doesn't utilize multiple processors for some reason. I might play around with that option.

Are bitmaps really limited to 512 megabytes?

Update: Rendering a poster now 23040x23040. Apparently, I can use antialiasing in poster mode, so the quality will be higher (24 bit true color), though I have a feeling the converted PNG might be too big to upload to DA.

Update 2: Wow, the 23040x23040 anti aliased 24-bit image looks even more amazing! It took 4 Gigs of RAM just to load it into GIMP for PNG conversion (original bitmap image is going strait to the recycle bin, LOL!). Unfortunately, the 1.48Gb bitmap only compressed down to 73.6Mb PNG and the file size limit for DeviantArt is 30Mb. If anybody wants to host a 73.6Mb Mandelbrot render, be my guest...

[Dinkydau]

The file size limitation is 80 MB for me on deviantart.

[stardust4ever]

The file size limitation is 80 MB for me on deviantart.

Is there a file size limit for Deviations and Scrapbook submissions?
Yes, there is a file size limit. Deviations and Scrapbook submissions can not be any larger than 30MB.

http://help.deviantart.com/753/

Are there any limitations on file upload and the storage of print files?
Yes.

Files submitted for prints through normal browser upload can be no larger than 60mb in file size.
....
Premium Subscription Print Account holders may use our FTP upload option to upload prints as large as 80mb in file size.

http://help.deviantart.com/712/

[element90]

You could render 4 quadrant views of that Mandelbrot and stitch them back together in an image format that does not have such a restrictive size limitation.

The maximum size supported by the PNG specification is 2 gigapixels by 2 gigapixels, unfortunately many tool kits don't allow you to get anywhere near, Gtkmm (used by Titan 3.0.x) will not allow a picture to be created that is bigger than 26754x26754 and it is from the picture that the file is saved, similarly for Qt (used for Titan 4.0.x to be released soon along with Saturn 4.0.0) the largest picture is 23170x23170. The dimensions I've given are for version of Titan running on Linux that has 8 gigabytes of RAM installed which reports "Not enough memory" for anything larger.

My experience with picture sizes is based on the relevant Gui toolkit which provide easy methods of saving images to file, programs that support larger image sizes must use an alternative method of converting the picture data (essentially just a large array of data) into PNG data chunks.

[stardust4ever]

The maximum size supported by the PNG specification is 2 gigapixels by 2 gigapixels, unfortunately many tool kits don't allow you to get anywhere near, Gtkmm (used by Titan 3.0.x) will not allow a picture to be created that is bigger than 26754x26754 and it is from the picture that the file is saved, similarly for Qt (used for Titan 4.0.x to be released soon along with Saturn 4.0.0) the largest picture is 23170x23170. The dimensions I've given are for version of Titan running on Linux that has 8 gigabytes of RAM installed which reports "Not enough memory" for anything larger.

My experience with picture sizes is based on the relevant Gui toolkit which provide easy methods of saving images to file, programs that support larger image sizes must use an alternative method of converting the picture data (essentially just a large array of data) into PNG data chunks.

Is 512 binary megapixels the largest size that the Windows bitmap format supports, or is that a software limitation? For whatever reason, Fractal Extreme only exports bitmap files, so I have to use Gimp to convert them to PNG.

[Fracturbator]

Nice. You should try uploading it to zoom.it

[stardust4ever]

Nice. You should try uploading it to zoom.it

Can I upload an image?

Not at this time. Zoom.it accepts only URLs to images elsewhere on the Internet. There are plenty of image hosting services on the web, though. Microsoft provides Live SkyDrive, for example.

[Fracturbator]

Try this ... works nicely !

http://zoom.it/KMEO

[stardust4ever]

Bump guys. I finally signed for an account and uploaded the anti-aliased versions to Mega.co.nz

24-bit opaque PNG (73.7Mb):
https://mega.co.nz/#!r4tiyQRA!itnpruwOE7E1n7xT9M-AoL1OFaUO7-MZnKhMg93Sbm0

32-bit PNG with alpha channel (80.8Mb):
https://mega.co.nz/#!zgtiRBjD!xpbKdX8pEoEeQB51xDwMcYmtiRzNRe5n52BUgmE9w7o

8-bit monocrome mask (1.4Mb):
https://mega.co.nz/#!mxljmapb!v1JQ8PUr5_1hHvK3zKWi9kw_EFHCHvLH3bhtZEpZ79Q