My First 1080p 60fps Mandelbrot Fractal Zoom (9 trillion x magnification) - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 24, 2016, 05:14:33 am
content: Hi folks,I just wanted to share a mathematical creation I've been working on the past few days. Most of you will instantly recognize this. I've dabbled in fractal mathematics and chaos theory for some time now, even having taken some University level courses, and was rendering my own back in the 80's when it was first popularized. Back then I had to write all the code and render it. Today we take it for granted that we have such computing power to deep dive so beautifully into these wonders.You can see a video of it here:I rendered it using Fraqtive athttp://fraqtive.mimec.org/, which generates a series of PNG's. After probably close to 30 hours worth of rendering each frame on my core i5 laptop, it generated 9000 PNG files totaling close to 20 gigabytes worth of files. Then I used ffmpeg to stitch all the files into a single MP4.What's interesting is that my deep dive is only on the order of 10^13 magnification roughly (10^2.97 to be exact, or 2^43 roughly). That is essentially a doubling of magnification 43 times, or going from say 1 cm to 10^-13 cm (which is about the scale of an atom). So even this incredible change in scale really goes to show you some idea of what the differences are between our macro world and that of the atoms that make it up.What does it have to do with electronics? I think there are huge potentials here that remain to be tapped.We probably all know fractal geometry antennas that have revolutionized cellular communication:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_antenna. Fractals have already made a huge impact in computer animation (procedural modelling), understanding what was though to be certain complex systems, understanding nature and mathematics. Pretty pictures and movies are just small bits of entertainment that do not even begin to do justice to this area of mathematics. It is but a glimpse of what is yet to unfold and I can almost guaranty it will make an even bigger impact in electronics and nanotechnology.

author: AntiProtonBoy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 24, 2016, 06:12:56 am
content: Next challenge: Render it in real time via the GPU.

author: German_EE
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 24, 2016, 11:52:11 am
content: Something weird is happening (try this)Watch the video full screen then after it finishes immediately click the back button on your browser till you get to the topics menu. Stare at the screen and it looks as if the monitor is zooming OUT.Cosmic O0

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 24, 2016, 12:00:37 pm
content: Pretty nice program, I've been playing a bit and rendering a little 1000-frame attempt in 4K, looks awesome!The program seems to do things a bit weirdly, performance is very inconsistent with occisional lockups just moving around, sometimes rendering is very fluid and at others it slows down to multiple seconds for just a preview...

author: sarepairman2
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 24, 2016, 06:40:59 pm
content: i've seen things you couldn't imagine....

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 24, 2016, 06:51:16 pm
content: Quote from: sarepairman2 on April 24, 2016, 06:40:59 pmReminds me of this....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tears_in_rain_monologueQuote

author: PointyOintment
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 25, 2016, 10:39:30 am
content: Somehow I've never seen the stuff depicted in the second half of the video before

author: wkb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 25, 2016, 11:05:44 am
content: Quote from: sarepairman2 on April 24, 2016, 06:40:59 pmBladerunner?

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 25, 2016, 10:18:46 pm
content: Quote from: sarepairman2 on April 24, 2016, 06:40:59 pmsnort...my archaic tester app from 16 years ago still can catch up till the end. slightly further before it hits pixelation limit. you must be using more up to date technique to get the better color gradation. i wont bother to update mine, it was just for some quick fun.https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Julia_circling.ogg

author: hamster_nz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 26, 2016, 03:14:15 am
content: Quote from: AntiProtonBoy on April 24, 2016, 06:12:56 amNot quite a GPU, but a FPGA with 840 DSP slices on it...http://hamsterworks.co.nz/mediawiki/index.php/Genesys2_MandelbrotAbout 192 G Ops/sec.Ok, it's not the same, but it is real time.

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 26, 2016, 03:19:58 am
content: Wow nice!

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 28, 2016, 06:19:31 pm
content: No such luck for me... I have an Intel integrated graphics chip in my laptop, where I'm doing the rendering. I haven't owned a GPU since my ATI card 15 years ago in my desktop!I think my eyes and brain will melt if and when I ever buy a new PC with top-end graphics (and that will be the end of productivity as I know it... I'll be glued to the computer, probably playing flight sims).I am putting together an infinite zoom series on a spiral fractal which I hope to be done in a few days. I'm now on the 3rd day of this rendering and on frame 6657 of 9000 only, and I have my machine running 24/7.The interesting thing is, when I get to the bottom of my zoom depth you can see a little "Mandelbrot" at the center of the spiral. I find it hard to believe that it just so happens to exist at my arbitrarily set point of zoom depth, not before or after. Also, everywhere along the zoom the pattern repeats (my plan is to actually extend the "zoom" by matching up similar points in the series and looping it multiple times).I'll update in a few days when the rendering is done... but this strange fact that the mini-Mandelbrot seems to show up *only* at my maximum zoom available is some kind of crazy coincidence or the math or algorithm or rounding error is somehow resulting in this happening.

author: hamster_nz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 28, 2016, 07:25:27 pm
content: Quote from: edy on April 28, 2016, 06:19:31 pmWhen you think about what the math is actually doing it isn't surprising that they show up everywhere.z(n+1) = Z(n)^2+CThe ^2 is a 'rotate and stretch', the +C is a translate.The deep repeating patterns form around point that are 'stable' (e.g. the when eventually z(n+x) = z(n), so a loop forms).

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 29, 2016, 03:42:07 am
content: I'm on frame 7000 of 9000, and it is getting slower although not by as much as I thought. The curve is exponential but only slightly. Thanks to the timestamps of the rendered frames, I was able to graph it in Excel . At this rate, it will be sometime tomorrow night when I may be finished.

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 01, 2016, 04:46:05 pm
content: Ok here it is.... after 5 days:

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 01, 2016, 08:52:13 pm
content: Interesting, I tend to prefer those that continuously move to different patterns but the infinite dive is cool too

author: Alex Eisenhut
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 02, 2016, 12:09:23 am
content: Awesome! I'm going to listen to some Ozric Tentacles now!

author: German_EE
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 02, 2016, 03:59:11 pm
content: Same effect as the last one, I'm now looking at a screen of text that seems to be zooming away from me. What was the music?

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2016, 03:29:14 am
content: I've decided to make my first 4K Ultra HD 60fps Mandelbrot rendering with Fraqtive. Not a very deep zoom, just a short 1 minute dive but definitely a lot of interesting patterns on the way down about 7 orders of magnitude (~10 million times magnification). I can't even view it in native resolution at 60fps on my machine. I neither have a 4K monitor, nor is my computer good enough to actually play such a video. Thankfully, YouTube will convert it to all the other lower streaming resolutions so I can see it.If you can view it on a 4K monitor and see it at the full 60fps, please let me know how it looks!I rendered 3600 frames since I wanted it to be 1 minute at 60 fps (60 frames per second x 60 seconds). Frame size is 3840 x 2160. Once rendered (which took a few hours on my slow Lenovo T410 laptop of 4-5 years vintage) I assembled all of the frames using ffmpeg by running the command "ffmpeg -r 60 -f image2 -s 3840x2160 -i s%04d.png -vcodec libx264 -crf 15 output.mp4" (that took another few hours). The s%04d.png was because the images were named s0001.png, s0002.png, s0003.png, etc.Here is the link (let me know how it looks if you manage to view it in 4K at 60fps):PS - I just uploaded it, so it may take a few minutes for YouTube to have all resolutions available and music added to the video. Come back in a few hours if you don't see the 4K version with music.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2016, 05:07:03 am
content: Looks great!

author: dexters_lab
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 12, 2016, 05:48:22 pm
content: very nice, i recently rediscovered fractals when i was playing recently with a 16 core serveri remember playing around with fractint back in the 1990si did a few vids recently using Fractal eXtreme:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2LHmBDdBWPKqIEd4VX0BTA/videos?sort=dd&view=0&shelf_id=0deepest i went was 2^205