Creating Prints of Large Fractals? 15
jkoshy asks: "I would like to make very large (10'x10') color fractal images using A4 size printouts that I would be assembling to make up the final picture. Most fractal generation programs that I have seen are designed for on-screen fractal viewing. Are there any programs (or scripts driving fractal generation programs) that can generate large printouts of fractal images?" I can't resist a good fractal poster and would love to be able to produce one on my own, as well. In addition to the poster's question, how difficult is it to get posters made from fractal images? What resolutions are typically required?
Fractint (Score:3, Informative)
Many moons ago in the college daze, my friends all jointly (pun intended) rented a big farm house which featured a giant white garage wall at the end of the long driveway. We'd planned to do use Fractint to create a series of sort of "paint-by-numbers" templates to cover this huge wall.
Never happened. Too much reggae, beer, sun, etc.
But still -- check out Fractint. They never got beyond version 20.x under DOS, but it's still one of the more flexible programs available for scripted automation... search for it in Google, there are a couple of dedicated sites out there.
Postscript and a -real- printer (Score:3, Insightful)
Then, instead of printing them A4 sized, I would use email or a disk and get it to a geniune printer. You seem to want a strange size, but they might be able to tape together two E size plots of the image (E size is I think 3ft by 4 ft, or whatever a standard architectural blueprint is). It would probably cost $50-80, but considering the cost of inkjet cartriges, this isn't bad.
Look for a place that does duplication or provides blueprint services. Kinkos will also sometimes have the equipment for this, but be prepared for their horrid pricing.
Re:Postscript and a -real- printer (Score:1)
Re:Postscript and a -real- printer (Score:2)
If you can get a postscript file of the fractal there are tones of programs out there that will tile the output.
Since postscript is just a programming language you could actually find the location/formula of the fractal you want by exploring in some quick lowres interactive program and then write a Postscript program to do the same thing calculating what you need for each page. You would then be able to print some huge image with what probably amounts to an 8-10k file.
check the web (Score:1)
services for large prints (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.BigNose.com/ [bignose.com]
See the DPreview printing forum for more information
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=10
Resolution (Score:3, Funny)
Infinite. Isn't that the whole point of fractals?
Re:resolution (Score:2)
Been there, done that. (Score:1)
Fractint has three features that you can use in conjunction to generate fractal images of this size. 1) Batch video mode, 2) Tiling, and 3) a way to fit the tiles together to a single image.
To get started, check out the sections "Batch mode" and "Disk-Video Modes" in the fractint help file.
The homepage of Fractint is http://www.fractint.org/ [fractint.org], which unfortunately seems to be down for the moment...
Use CAD (Score:2)
Oh, yeah, then there is the pricetag on AutoCAD.
use the poster program to split print into n pages (Score:1)
you can download it here [ctan.org]
I've made some beautifull posters with it. All you need is scissors and tape. It even prints allignment crop marks for you.
Warning! I have had trouble using it on level 2 PS. Level 1 works fine though.
Gimp Fractal Explorer (Score:1)
I gave it a shot here, but gimp on NT chokes with large images. Once you get the image the poster program mentioned above should be great.
Another option is Xaos, with the options "xaos -render filename -size widthxheight -antialiasing", but you'll have to write a script to get xaos to the point where you want to see some output. I don't know whether it would be easier to use this or fractint, but xaos does give you a few more options.