kerns@iwu1c.UUCP (John Kerns - AT&T BL) (08/28/84)
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Fractals, fascinating stuff really. I've looked at the books put
out by Mandelbrot because the pictures are more interesting than the
math needed to produce them (not entirely true) [This stems from
a mathmatician turned computer scientist attitude.]
Anyway, I used to do work in image processing in graduate school,
and we used some simple fractal models to produce things like
cloud cover, coast lines, forest cover, etc. Depending on the
fractal model used, and the amount of computer time you are willing
to use, these models can produce amazingly realistic images.
A good article on this can be found a year or so back in the
Communications of the ACM; a more detailed article can be found
in the ACM SIGGRAPH journal - written by Mandelbrot while at IBM.
Any responses to me should be by mail since I don't read this
group very often.
John Kerns
AT&T Bell Labs
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