Loren Carpenter and fractal Mountains

PBS Nova hunting the hidden dimension is a good-looking record film (with a high-definition version) that focuses on fragment. This article introduced Loren Carpenter and the fractal mountains. Loren Carpenter is a graphics master, I pieced together a piece of text on the internet, books, and video to describe his legendary past events at the end of 1970s (to be continued ).

Loren Carpenter was born on 1947. Since 1966 and 1980, it has been working in Boeing's computer service department. In the early 1970 s, carpenter went to school at the University of Washington while working. I come to work early every day, go to college at noon, and go back to work at night. In this way, carpenter completed his university degree in 1974, obtained a bachelor's degree in mathematics, followed by a graduate degree in computer science and engineering, and obtained a master's degree two years later. Since 1972, he began to study various graphics papers in the university library and learned the latest developments at that time. Finally, he entered Boeing's computer graphics software development department with his own efforts. In such an environment, carpenter came into contact with very advanced and expensive computer graphics devices in that era. Now it's very common frame buffers, with a price of $30000 at that time.
In 1978, a group of engineers at the Boeing Aircraft Company in Seattle were designing experimental aircraft. A strange design, with two wings, two tails, or two bodies, is constantly being tried. At that time, a young computer expert, carpenter, was helping them design visual aids to simulate various states of aircraft in flight. Obtain data from engineers, program the drawings, and generate aircraft images from various angles. Carpenter wants to draw mountains below the plane because there is a charming Mountain in each public photo of Boeing. At the end of 1970s, there was actually no quick way to draw mountains. Compared with today's computers in the late 1970s S, it can be said that it was extremely slow, and the mountains were composed of millions of small triangles. It was almost impossible to generate an animation of planes passing through the mountains. Just as carpenter was confused and helpless, a bookstore encounter a strange book inadvertently changed his life path. From then on, he said goodbye to ordinary people.
Carpenter lives in the outskirts of Seattle with his wife, Rachel, and his son. After dinner in the evening, they often drive to the city, take a walk on the street, and go to the university bookstore by the way. One day, I took a regular walk and looked at the magazine at a newsstand. Suddenly, the fragment picture on the album art of science America attracted his eye, and the fragment picture of Mandelbrot. When he read Martin gardnerud's article about this fractal topic in the magazine, he immediately thought that this mathematical method could solve his problem, and that fractal could generate mountains in a semi-automated manner. As a result, carpenter quickly went to the bookstore to buy the name of Mandelbrot, "fragment object-shape, opportunity and dimension" (changed to "natural fragment ry" in 1982). When I got home, I started to read it. I used a 2 to 3 times magnifiers to browse it twice from start to end, and even those small words were not missed, including the notes and documents. In the book of Mandelbrot, the various forms of nature can be described as "fragment" in mathematics, and there are mathematical models behind the shapes that look uneven and incomplete. However, after carefully studying the Mandelbrot book, he found that the method mentioned in the book was not practical and the result was not very beautiful, so he was very disappointed. During this time, just as Lucas's "Star Wars" was just released, carpenter's family waited for a car on their way to the cinema, and carpenter stood in the rain for four hours. Finally, I finally arrived at the cinema and found that other people in the cinema were soaked. The whole family is fascinated by the film. Carpenter even hopes to work with Lucas in the future. One day, he will be able to use his computer to make an amazing scene, preferably the terrain of a planet outside. The movie star wars gave carpenter the courage and strength to continue studying the fragment mountains. The method in the Mandelbrot book can also generate mountains, but the speed is very slow and inefficient. It requires a fast implementation on the computer. Algorithm . One night, carpenter watched the unfinished link on the paper. Two minutes later, his inspiration came. He suddenly realized that he had a complete algorithm in his mind. Although the lightning, landscape, and clouds in nature differ in scales and details, they all have consistent geometric descriptions. Carpenter decided to try to generate the fragment mountains on his computer. His generation method was surprisingly simple and mechanical, recursively split and replaced by the midpoint. It took him three days to complete the code and debugging. On the morning of the third day, carpenter suddenly rushed to the office to view the mountain chart produced by the computer last night. At that time, carpenter recalled: "I was completely stunned, and history was born here ".

Carpenter I am very eager to work in the graphics Research Institute established by Lucas. He knows that this is one of the few pure research institutions in the world, where there is a group of top graphics elites, and there is no teaching task, which he like. As a result, when the fragment mountains were just generated on the screen, he was excited and immediately printed out and sent to the Research Institute of Lucas. After the image is sent, Carpenter I feel a little inferior. I am just an ordinary Boeing Company.ProgramClerk, it is only possible that Lucas film company has burned the cover letter of all candidates for heating to discover himself. To attract widespread attention from others, he had an ambitious idea to attach his fractal mountain graphics Siggraph 1980 Cover of the proceedings. Carpenter I plan to make a short fragment movie and submit it Siggraph . In the film, he wants to show the essence of fractal ry, whether the camera is tight or away from the mountains, it can provide enough real details. Since it was a movie, there must be no lack of background music. At that time, young people liked rock and he chose a two-minute song from the Beatle." Flying ". The name of the video is also ready. Vol libre " , The meaning of "Flying Freely.

just as carpenter was preparing to work hard, Alvy of Lucas's Research Institute also received a "Love Letter" from Boeing ". Just a few mountain view pictures, without any text descriptions, but it can be seen that it is a computer-generated digital image. Alvy never imagined that computers could generate such authentic mountain pictures as before. It seems that the use of the manelbrot fractal technology may be used, but it cannot be guessed who did it. Alvy easily pinned the most beautiful picture to the wall. He wanted to meet the guy at the upcoming Siggraph meeting.
Boeing is very supportive of carpenter's idea, providing some funds and allowing him to develop this project during work hours. Carpenter spent the whole day on his beloved movie, busy modifying the program during the day, and starting the program at night to generate each frame of image on the computer tape. He devoted more than four months to the video in just two minutes. Day by day, his film is almost finished day by day, and the period of siggparh is approaching day by day. At this time, carpenter often felt inexplicably nervous. What should I do if a sound problem occurs during the demonstration? What should we do if there is a color problem? Any negligence will result in the effect displayed on Siggraph.