Welcome to Fractal landscapes. The main purpose of this site is to share some of the images and experience generated from my interest in fractal landscapes and fractals in general. I also publish other projects of mine here, including useful little apps, source code and libraries and other things that don't deserve their own website for whatever reason. Recent updates:

  • Added a free arbitrary-precision C# number library (big integer and big float) with source code: here
  • I have updated the maths section here with a small snipped about Catmull-Rom splines and bicubic subdivision, which will be interesting for technogeeks.
  • Find and Book a cleaner - I'm currently working mostly full-time on an online marketplace for domestic cleaners called Helpwiz. See here: Helpwiz. The idea is that this allows clients to find and book an independent cleaner in their area. We're now live with cleaners in London, cleaners in Edinburgh and also Reading and Coventry.

I have had an interest in fractal landscape generation and landscape rendering for some time now. I have, over time, written no fewer than five different landscape generation programs. Most recently (some years ago now, though), I wrote a rather powerful fractal landscape program in C++, and stuck it in a nice, user-friendly interface (Windows). I haven't decided under what conditions to make the program available to the public – it now seems unlikely that I ever shall – so this remains a site whose primary purpose is to share with you all some of the wonderful landscapes that the program has produced. It also contains galleries of other fractals and of some photos that I have taken, as well as some brief background on the maths of fractal landscape generation.

While I have written several rendering programs of my own, I realised almost as soon as I saw Terragen that it would take a very long time indeed to write one that was nearly as capable as it is. For this reason, I made my generator compatible with Terragen and left if at that. This allowed me to produce pictures of the program's output with a minimum of effort on the rendering side.

My program does not allow the user to directly edit the terrain. This may sound like a shortcoming, but it is my belief that concentrating on algorithmic techniques provides a more flexible and powerful approach. This sort of guided randomness, where the user has control over the overall shape but none of the specifics, if by far the most interesting and exciting method of landscape generation.

This site is divided into a few principal sections. The About section explains in a little more detail the history behind my fractal landscape project, and shows some pictures of previous projects which built up to this one. The Images section contains a gallery of the best images that I have produced from these landscapes. The Images 2 section contains a gallery of other computer generated images. The Photos section contains some photos I have taken. Prints of many of the pictures here are available if you click on PRINTS. The Maths section contains a layperson's introduction to the ideas behind fractal landscape generation (rather than a deeply technical explanation). The Links section contains links to various similar sites (a few Terragen galleries, the Terragen homepage and Pandromeda).

This site, 'www.fractal-landscapes.co.uk' and all material contained herein, copyright Adam Brown 2002 - 2020.