What are Fractal Mountains?

Fractal mountains are computer generated shapes that have an appearance similar to real life mountains. What is a Fractal? A fractal is a geometric figure that is typically generated through some form of recursion, with a specific function changing the shape several times. How are the Fractal Mountains Generated? We start off by drawing a triangle in 3D space. We must create a coordinate system that can make a 2D plane act as a 3D place. Within our original triangle, we connect the midpoints of each line to form 4 triangles, and then shift each vertice up, down, or diagonally by a randomly generated number. We repeat this process several times (which is where the recursive algorithm comes in) and end up with a fractal mountain Beyond just the recursive formula, I added several features such as colouring methods, and rotation about any axis. This project was a group effort, which involved contribution from my computer science teacher, Mr. Nick Nolfi (misternolfi.com).