I spent a couple hours generating strange attractors in Flash, just a simple 2D version for now. Click to play:

Click the black region to generate new polynomial coefficients and redraw. You will have to click many times to generate something interesting. That's the nature of fractals, I'm afraid. Some coefficients are automatically thrown out if the drawing exceeds a certain size. Unfortunately, the inverse is not true: the code isn't smart enough to trash any drawings that shrink to microscopic size.

I believe that you can stabilize any coefficients by scaling the values of each coefficient, gradually nudging them larger/smaller until the drawing is stable. I'll try this when I get more time. I've been gung-ho on my first proper iPhone app, trying to finish it before Christmas! Stay tuned...

Also, here's the source code for the strange attractor harness! Enjoy.

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Source code: julia_tile_src.zip. Pixel Bender code is in src/shader/.

The default image is Seattle's Space Needle. You can upload custom images. Very large images may set your processor on fire.

Parameters: Iterations sets how many times the Julia formula is applied per pixel. The iteration increments appear smooth, not stepped, because the code tweens across the destination coordinates of the two nearest iterations. Complex X&Y are the real & imaginary values of the transform constant. Bias X&Y is something I hacked in, it skews the coordinates in a linear way, becoming more intense with each iteration.

The Fill Types are as follows:

• 0: Pixels out of range are transparent; no fill.
• 1: Repeats the nearest edge pixel.
• 2: Repeats the source image, mirroring every other copy to create a smooth transition.
• 3: Repeats the source image without mirroring.

The filter needs more features before it's "done", hopefully it's still enjoyable. The Pixel Bender code took about 30 minutes to write; the Flex wrapper took much longer.

Despite its limited feature set, Pixel Bender is pretty cool. My only misgiving is that Pixel Bender's runtime performance is never as good as I hope. I have another filter in the works that mimics NTSC television artifacts, but the performance is abysmal. The code can still be optimized; stay tuned.

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