README.md

N°69 - Mandelbrot Set

I've always wanted to generate a representation of the Mandelbrot Set myself, and this challenge is the perfect opportunity to do so! This project will be coded in Rust, and it will be creating an image of the Mandelbrot Set in a .png file.

Images credits: Wolfgang Beyer, for Wikipedia.

Starting the challenge

I already knew this recurrence equation that leads to the creation of the wonderful Mandelbrot Set, first rendered in 1978 by Robert W. Brooks and Peter Matelski in 1978 :

$z_{n+1}=z_n^2+c$, with $z_0=0$ and $c$ a complex number

But how exactly does it work, how can I use it in my program? Well, after doing a bit of research on Wikipedia and reading this very interesting article, I had a grasp of how this formula is used.

First, we need to understand what is the Mandelbrot Set. As its name suggests, this mathematical object is the set of complex numbers $c$ for which the recurrence relation $z_n$ (defined above) doesn't diverge to infinity. This very simple formula yields the amazing Mandelbrot Set fractal when plotted on a 2D plane, especially when accounting for the numbers of iterations it took for the equation to diverge!

Solving the challenge

A way to render the result

I first needed a way to generate an image of the result. To do so, I added the image crate to my Cargo.toml and imported it inside the main.rs file:

use image::{GrayAlphaImage, LumaA};

Because the rendered result was going to be in grayscale, I only imported LumaA and GrayAlphaImage.

I then created an image img and added a loop to iterate through all the pixels of the image, because each pixel was going to represent a complex number:

let mut img = GrayAlphaImage::new(width, height);
for (x, y, pixel) in img.enumerate_pixels_mut() {
  *pixel = get_pixel(x, y, width, height);
}

I defined width and height of the image by first chosing the range of complex numbers I was going to plot. Because all the complex numbers $c$ of the Mandelbrot Set lie within (approximately) $-2+1.12i$ to $0.47-1.12i$, I declared a RANGE constant with the minimum and maximum x and y values (with y being the imaginary part of the complex plane):

const RANGE: ((f64, f64), (f64, f64)) = ((-2., 0.47), (1.12, -1.12));

To determine the size of the image based on those numbers, I first needed to chose a resolution for the image. I settled with 2048. The resolution corresponds to how many pixels to plot per unit (i.e. between 0 and 1, there would be 2048 pixels). I then declared the width and height based of the distance between each range and scaled it with the resolution:

const RESOLUTION: f64 = 2048.;

fn main() {
  // - Snip -
  let width = (((RANGE.0).0 - (RANGE.0).1).abs() * RESOLUTION).round() as u32;
  let height = (((RANGE.1).0 - (RANGE.1).1).abs() * RESOLUTION).round() as u32;
  // - Snip -
}

Now that I had an image with the right amount of pixels, with each of them representing a complex number, it was time to move on to the rendering!

Rendering the Mandelbrot Set

I first defined a function get_pixel that would determine if a given complex number $c$ (determined from two givens px and py coordinated in the image) belonged to the set or not, and return a LumaA (transparent grayscale) pixel based on the numbers of iteration it took for $c$ to diverge. I then needed a way to represent a complex number inside my code. That's why I added the num-complex crate and imported it using the use keyword in the main.rs file. Inside the get_pixel function, I started by declaring three variables:

• i, mutable, to keep count of the numbers of iterations that happened before $z_n(c)$ bailed out.
• z, also mutable, which is basically the current $z_n$.
• c, the complex number represented at position px and py in the image.