lane@sumex-aim.stanford.edu (Christopher Lane) (03/03/90)
I've FTP'd a 'Topology.app' custom surface data file, mandelbrot.top.Z, to the submissions directory of the cs.orst.edu NeXT archive. This *.top file is (obviously) the Mandelbrot set rendered as a surface (instead of the usual color representation) where the X axis is the real component, the Y axis the imaginary and the Z axis the (logarithm of) the number of iterations used to determine whether the point was in the Mandelbrot set. Points (believed to be) in the set form a plateau and near misses create a mountain-like effect. You can load it into Topology.app using the 'Custom' option. You might want to set x, y and z rotation angles to zero the first time you render it to convince yourself that it is in fact a Mandelbrot set. Then raise the x just a bit (eg. 0.34) to start to see the depths. The wireframe rendering also looks nice at some angles. If anyone comes up with any particularly good settings for the 'Rotation Angles', 'Light Source Direction' and other knobs for this data set, do let me know. If anyone cares enough about this to want the source code that generated the *.top file, I'll gladly make it available as well. - Christopher -------