Dynamic fractals

An illustration of Kolmogorov’s idea of capturing a complicated pattern in a short algorithm can be found in computer graphics. A subculture that has grown around this idea involves creating tweet length (280 character) code for drawing complex patterns.

I show some of these in the book

../_images/Zozuar.png

from a Twitter account @zozuar.

Examples

Here are some more of these in animated form. All of these are created with 280 characters of computer code on a webpage called TWIGL.

../_images/flower.gif

Flowers (interactive version)

../_images/water.gif

Water (interactive version)

../_images/landscape.gif

Landscape (interactive version)

../_images/parsley.gif

Parsley (interactive version)

../_images/forest.gif

Forest (interactive version)

../_images/towers.gif

Towers (interactive version)

Do it yourself

A good starting point if you want to learn to make these yourself is to try out Shadertoy. Since the 280 character code challenge involves getting as much as possible out of very short snippets of code, they can be difficult to follow. So, I recommend you watch this video to start with.

Kishimisu goes step-by-step through the tools and the functions used to create striking dynamic visuals.

Another good introdcution to ray tracing is

Some more advanced tutorials can be found on Inigo Quilez homepage <https://www.shadertoy.com/user/iq>´_. There is also a shadertoy implementation of the `flowers example from above.

For TWIGL, instructions for inputs and ouputs can be found on their github page.