zardosht/mandelbrot

Drawing Mandelbrot set

mandelbrot

This is the Capstone project of Udacity's C++ Nanodegree. The mandelbort program draws a Mandelbrot set on an image with size given by user. The image size must be one of the values 128, 256, 512, 1024. User can zoom in and zoom out in the image and select the center point for zooming.

Controls:

• i: zoom in
• o: zoom out
• q: close window and quit
• mouse click: set center point for zooming

Dependencies for Running Locally

• cmake >= 3.7
  • All OSes: click here for installation instructions
• make >= 4.1 (Linux, Mac), 3.81 (Windows)
  • Linux: make is installed by default on most Linux distros
  • Mac: install Xcode command line tools to get make
  • Windows: Click here for installation instructions
• gcc/g++ >= 5.4
  • Linux: gcc / g++ is installed by default on most Linux distros
  • Mac: same deal as make - install Xcode command line tools
  • Windows: recommend using MinGW
• OpenCV >= 4.1 https://opencv.org/

Build and Run Instructions

1. create a build folder in the root mandelbrot folder
2. cd build && cmake ..
3. make
4. ./mandelbrot

File Structure

The project consists of the following files:

• main.cpp - Interface between user and OpenCV. Created a cv::Mat for the image. Receives user's input for zooming in and out and setting the center point for zooming. Creates an instance of Mandelbrot class and passes user's commands to it.
• mandelbrot.h - Header file for Mandelbrot and some auxillary classes. Inspired by this blog post, the Mandelbrot class uses a Window class for managing the domain of the Mandelbrot set and the drawn image and conversion between image space (pixel coordinates) and current domain of Mandelbrot set. The Window class also takes care of changing the domain of Mandelbrot set when zooming in and out.
• mandelbort.cpp - Implementation of Mandelbrot class. We use the simple escape time algorithm for drawing the image. The image (a cv::Mat instance) is separated into segments (as much as CPU cores (std::thread::hardware_concurrency())). The Mandelbrot:::draw() method then uses threads to calculate number of iterations for each point and setting the corresponding pixel color in image segment.

Basic Build Instructions

1. Clone this repo.
2. Make a build directory in the top level directory: mkdir build && cd build
3. Compile: cmake .. && make
4. Run it: ./Capstone.
5. Follow the instructions.
6. View generated images in the /build/ folder.