A fractal landscape or fractal surface is generated using a stochastic algorithm designed to produce fractal behavior that mimics the appearance of natural terrain. In other words, the surface resulting from the procedure is not a deterministic, but rather a random surface that exhibits fractal behavior.
A fractal landscape rendered in Terragen.
Computer generated fractal terrain using Perlin noise with Adobe Photoshop and Terragen.
Computer-generated fractal wooded hills using Visual Nature Studio.
In mathematics, a fractal is a geometric shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension. Many fractals appear similar at various scales, as illustrated in successive magnifications of the Mandelbrot set. This exhibition of similar patterns at increasingly smaller scales is called self-similarity, also known as expanding symmetry or unfolding symmetry; if this replication is exactly the same at every scale, as in the Menger sponge, the shape is called affine self-similar. Fractal geometry lies within the mathematical branch of measure theory.
Mandelbrot set at islands
The Mandelbrot set: its boundary is a fractal curve with Hausdorff dimension 2. (Note that the colored sections of the image are not actually part of the Mandelbrot Set, but rather they are based on how quickly the function that produces it diverges.)
Mandelbrot set with 12 encirclements
2x 120 degrees recursive IFS
