chaopyc project
In some previous posts I have mentioned in passing an old project of mine about fractals with Python. Although it still needs updates and more explanation, I have decided to bite the bullet and publish it as-is, with the aim of improving it over time rather than having it collecting virtual dust on my hard disk.
The project is called chaopyc (a portmanteau of “chaotic” and “Py(thon)”) and is available on GitHub.
I have loved fractals since I first learned about them as a kid, thanks to my mother. At first I loved the colors and the variety of shapes, then the generative aspect (a simple formula can generate such a complex pattern!), and finally the math behind (complex numbers, non-linearity, fractal dimension, and so on).
The software I was using as a kid was called Winfract, the Windows version of Fractint, which was and is itself very flexible and feature-rich. I am very grateful to Fractint developers for having created such a great software, as when I first learned Python and NumPy more than 10 years ago, I attempted to replicate some of its features. This resulted in a lot of research on NumPy, GUIs, and graphics (including Matplotlib and OpenGL), some of which I mentioned in the previous post.
I am resurrecting and refurbishing this very old code, which I will make available soon. It is by no means a complete product, for which there are much more advanced solutions such as XaoS; it's more a collection of experiments. Yet, I am happy that, back then, I managed to replicate many of the formulae that Fractint provided, and also that I ventured into 3D data visualization and GUI design.