Fractals and LSystms分形L系统.pptVIP

Fractals and L-Systems Brian Cavalier 15-462 November 25, 1997 Overview The notion of a fractal Self similarity and Iteration Fractal Dimension Fractal Uses L-Systems What’s With Euclid Anyway? (Motivation) Aren’t sphere’s, cubes, and polygons good enough? Well, it depends on your intent, but ... Not many interesting real-world objects are really traditional geometric objects. Coastlines, trees, lightning These could be modeled with cylinders, polygons, etc, but ... Their true level of complexity can only be crudely approximated with traditional geometric shapes First, a Question How long is the coast line of Britain? How would you measure it? A Solution? Start by looking at it from a satellite Pick equally spaced points and draw lines between them. Then measure the lines Now you know the length, right? Well, sort of ... What if you move closer and decrease the distance between the points? Suddenly what looked like a straight stretch of coast becomes bays and peninsulas The Notion of a Fractal “... a geometrically complex object, the complexity of which arises through the repetition of form over some range of scales.” -- Ken Musgrave, Texturing and Modeling Say what? Self-Similarity and Iteration Simple Shapes repeat themselves exactly at different scales Koch curves and snowflakes Statistical Statistics of a random geometry are similar at different scales Trees, rivers, mountains, lightning Physical Dimension A point, line, plane, and cube all have physical dimension that we accept as being 0, 1, 2, and 3 respectively. Mandelbrot’s view Dimension is a scale-dependent term Consider zooming in on a ball of thread Fractal Dimension In the Euclidian plane we usually speak of topological dimension, which is always an integer. Fractal dimensions can have non-integer values. What does a dimension of, say, 2.3 mean? 2 is the underlying Euclidian dimension of the fractal The fractional value “slides” from 0 to 0.9999... as the fractal goes from occupying its Euclidian di