movingAttractor

Read more about this in my blog post here. I built this on Ubuntu 16.04, you will need to have openGL to compile this.

For using this type make and then ./tool in the terminal. This version only produces the results in a viewing window, if you want to save the images to a file, uncomment the line number 223, which is using screenshot_ppm to save the images. Be careful then to also define what the files should be called and where they should be saved.

Further developments with Claude

The project was extended using Claude Code to add a number of new features. Build and run with:

make
./attractor --help

Multiple attractor types

Pass --type to select an attractor:

Name	Flag
King's Dream (original)	--type kings_dream
Clifford	--type clifford
De Jong	--type de_jong
Bedhead	--type bedhead
Svensson	--type svensson

Color modes

Pass --color to choose a coloring strategy:

Mode	Description
mono	Single color, configurable via --mono-r/g/b (default: white)
hue_cycle	Cycles through hues as iterations progress
velocity	Colors by how fast the point is moving
angle	Colors by the direction of movement

Tune the hue sweep with --hue-start and --hue-range (both 0–1).

Generating a video

mkdir frames
./attractor --save --output frames --frames 600 --color hue_cycle --width 1920 --height 1080
ffmpeg -r 30 -i frames/%05d.ppm -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -crf 18 output.mp4

Key parameters:

Flag	Default	Description
--width / --height	1000	Output resolution
--frames	600	Total frames to render
--iterations	2000000	Points plotted per frame
--delta	0.1	Amplitude of parameter oscillation
--alpha	0.02	Point transparency

Interactive exploration

Launch with -I for a live view with a HUD and keyboard controls:

./attractor --interactive --type clifford --color hue_cycle

Key	Action
1–5	Switch attractor type
c	Cycle color mode
Q/q W/w E/e R/r	Increase/decrease params a b c d
+ / -	More / fewer iterations
A / a	Increase / decrease alpha
H	Toggle HUD overlay
S	Save current frame to output dir
0	Reset params to attractor defaults
Space	Pause / resume animation
ESC	Exit

The following is an example of rendered output, check the link above to see the animation in action.