Quaternion Julia Raytracer

Be a virtual sculptor and create your own personal art in just seconds. Then use it as a background image to impress your friends. Play with the parameters to create an unlimited number of exciting 3D shapes. You can make the sculpture shiny by selecting an environment that will be reflected on the object.

Quaternion Julia Raytracer is the first real-time raytracer for the IPhone 3GS and iPhone 4. It renders the quaternion Julia fractal with high accuracy. By modifying the fractal parameters, an unlimited number of complex shapes can be generated.

Fractals are self-similar mathematical shapes in complex space. Just like the traditional Julia fractal, a quaternion Julia fractal is computed as stable complex points of a iterative funtion in complex space. However, 4 dimensional complex numbers, so called quaternions, are used instead of 2 dimensional complex numbers. This app uses the graphics chip of the IPhone 3GS or iPhone 4 to compute a 3D slice through the 4D complex space of the quaternion Julia set by raytracing using OpenGL ES 2.0 shaders.

Double/Triple tap and drag the finger horizontally or vertically to change the shape of the quaternion Julia fractal. You can also set these constant in the Settings tab. The Settings tab also allows to enable an environment that is mirrored on the Julia set. The accuracy of the fractal surface can also be set here. If you have red-cyan glasses available, you can see the fractal with real depth by enabling stereo mode.

A one finger drag rotates the camera around the object, a two finger pinch is used for zooming and a three finger drag translates the camera. You can hide the tab bar to create a screen shot. Double tap to bring back the tab bar.

!!!! Important announcement !!!!
To take a screen shot, hold down the home button and then push the top button. The screen will flash and the resulting image will be placed on your camera roll. From there, you can sync it back to your computer, e-mail it to friends, or do anything else you can do with any other photo in your camera roll.