Description

This is a very simple project I made to visualize the Mandelbrot set using Rust. The Mandelbrot set is a fractal defined by iterating $z_{i+1} = z_i^2 + c$ (where $z_0 = 0$ and $c$ is a coordinate in complex space) until the value escapes a disk of radius $2$ ($|z_i| \geq 2$). If it does escape, the point is not in the set, otherwise, it is. We can color each pixel by how many iterations it takes break this condition to make a nice visualization.

The default controls are left-clicking to zoom, right-clicking to go back to the previous view, and space to toggle a box which shows the next zoom selection. The left and right arrow keys will also allow you to cycle through colorschemes while running the program, and tab will invert the colorscheme.

Installation

Dependencies for pix-engine:

macOS, Linux, or Windows 10 Subsystem for Linux (homebrew)

brew install sdl2 sdl2_gfx sdl2_image sdl2_mixer sdl2_ttf

Linux (package manager)

Note: The minimum SDL2 version is 2.0.20. Some package managers may not have the latest versions available.

• Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install libsdl2-dev libsdl2-gfx-dev libsdl2-image-dev
libsdl2-mixer-dev libsdl2-ttf-dev

• Fedora:

sudo dnf install SDL2-devel SDL2_gfx-devel SDL2_image-devel SDL2_mixer-devel SDL2_ttf-devel

• Arch:

sudo pacman -S sdl2 sdl2_gfx sdl2_image sdl2_mixer sdl2_ttf

Windows (MSVC)

1. Download the latest SDL2 MSVC development libraries from https://www.libsdl.org/download-2.0.php e.g. (SDL2-devel-2.0.20-VC.zip).
2. Download the latest SDL2_image, SDL2_mixer, and SDL2_ttf MSVC development libraries from https://www.libsdl.org/projects/. e.g. (SDL2_image-devel-2.0.5-VC.zip).
3. Unzip each .zip file into a folder.
4. Copy library files:
   • from: lib\x64\
   • to: C:\Users\{Username}\.rustup\toolchains\{current toolchain}\lib\rustlib\{current toolchain}\lib where {current toolchain} is likely stable-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc. Note: If you don’t use rustup, See rust-sdl2 for more info on Windows installation.
5. Copy all dll files:
   • from: lib\x64\
   • to: your cargo project next to Cargo.toml. MSVC binaries for SDL2 are also present in this repository under the lib folder.

Installation with cargo:

After the dependencies are installed, you can run:

cargo install --git https://github.com/denehoffman/mandelbrot.git

This will add the executable mandelbrot to your path. Run mandelbrot for the default viewer, or run mandelbrot --help for more options, including changing window size and colorscheme.