3D Fractals

Well, actually, they are 2D fractals as in my previous post, but with progress along the list of turning instructions translated as depth instead of color (red to blue).
So each turn is a duplicated stick extruded from the last one and moved very slightly down. So you end up seeing clusters of sticks casting shadows on the ones below it. Looks cool, nay?

Flash Fractals (from 11/08)

I saw a NOVA on the subject and wanted to try my own.
I made a flash applet that takes a set of coded turning instructions and draws a line (eg: R, R, L for two right turns, then a left... like the old LOGO thing on the apple IIe!).
The turning instructions are generated by starting with one letter of the code, adding a letter, and then duplicating, mirroring, and inversing the code. So, 1. start with R 2. then add say an R 3. then duplicate the code before the letter you just added, so you have {R,R,R} 4. and also inverse the letters on the duplicated side {R,R,L} 5. do it again! RRL > RRLR > RRLRRLL (that was the second iteration. 6. iterate it 20 times and you'll have a list of instructions just over a million letters long. Have the computer follow the instructions and you get a picture like that over there, the famous Jurassic Park fractal. That's actually a million little lines making a quarter million little squares that add up to this big, bumpy, spirally thing that I guess reminded Michael Crichton (RIP) of a fern.
That's what you get if you stick to 90 degree turns and a two-letter code.

The rest of these (below) are some results from my experiments with 4-letter codes and other angle increments.

Orgs: a Flash Simulation of Social Life (from 4/09)

I've just finished reading The Selfish Gene (Dawkins) twice and I wanted to try to make for myself the computer simulations he talks about in one of the final chapters. I remember Sagan mentioning them in The Demon Haunted World too. The game is about about strategies for survival in a social environment and the evolution of what we perceive as morals.

New "Lilly" scene for my Banner

I've been having a lot of fun with my new Cintiq 21UX. To mark the beginning of this blog, I redrew and recolored the old Lillylustre scene that I have used for my banner before.