mdz Mandelbrot Deep Zoom

[jwm-art]

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:





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

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

James Morris.

[Tglad]

Awesome, the surrounds of the second picture remind me of turbulent flow, like clouds on jupiter.

[jwm-art]

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

[jwm-art]

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/mdz-0.0.4.tar.bz2

Cheers,
James.

[stigomaster]

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

[jwm-art]

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

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.

[stigomaster]

Yeah, it's mdz-0.0.5b alright.

Settings file attached, I had to copy it to another file with .txt extension to upload it.

[jwm-art]

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

[stigomaster]

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

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.

[jwm-art]

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

[stigomaster]

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.

[Buddhi]

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

Good work!

[jwm-art]

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

Good work!

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.

[stigomaster]

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.

[jwm-art]

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

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.