The thefractals.net guide
Every fractal on this site is drawn live by your graphics card, so you can pan, zoom, recolour and save your own. This guide explains what each page does, how every control in Fractal Studio works, and how to save a picture good enough to print.
Quick start
- Open a page from the menu at the top-left of any fractal page. The first one you land on, Fractal, morphs by itself.
- Drag to move the picture and scroll (or pinch on a phone) to zoom. The detail keeps going deeper than you would expect.
- Press the gear ⚙ (bottom-left) to open or close the controls. Press Regenerate (or R) for a new look whenever you like.
- Save a picture you love, or Share it: the link reopens exactly what you were looking at.
The pages
The pages fall into two families: flat (2D) fractals you can zoom into forever, and 3D fractals you fly around or through.
Flat fractals
| Page | What it is | Main controls |
|---|---|---|
| Fractal | The home page: a Mandelbrot and Julia set that slowly morphs into liquid metal. | Weave (Mandelbrot ↔ Julia), Metallic, Regenerate, Auto, Record a 20-second clip, Save as a 4K wallpaper |
| Julia | A living Julia set in liquid metal. | Same controls as Fractal, plus a Guide line for straightening |
| Phoenix | The Phoenix fractal: spiralling shapes where every step remembers the last. | Same controls, plus Phoenix Pose, which snaps it upright |
| Nova | Swirling three-fold basins from a relaxed Newton method. | Same controls, plus Auto-morph |
| Dive | An endless, hypnotic zoom into the Mandelbrot set. | Speed, Color, Spin, Detail, Metallic, New depth |
| Kleinian | Infinitely nested circles, packed deeper and deeper. | Speed, Color, Depth, Zoom |
| Nebula | A drifting cosmic gas cloud with stars and meteors (not a fractal formula, but the same live style). | Density, Hue, Flow, Stars, Twinkle, Core, Glow, Meteors, Save |
| Explore | Fractal Studio: sixteen fractal types and the full toolbox. The rest of this guide is mostly about this page. | See below |
3D fractals
| Page | What it is | Main controls |
|---|---|---|
| Bulb | The Mandelbulb, a 3D fractal that looks almost biological. | Power (reshapes it), Speed, Color, Metallic, Detail, Pause, Share, Save 4K |
| Box | The Mandelbox: impossible recursive architecture. | Scale, Speed, Color, Detail, Pause, Save 4K |
| Menger | A fly-through of the Menger sponge, a cube full of endless holes. | Iterations, Speed, Color, Detail |
| KIFS | An alien cathedral built from folding space. | Fold, Speed, Color, Detail, Share this view (drag to pan, scroll to zoom) |
| Quat | A four-dimensional Julia set sliced into 3D and rendered as polished chrome. | Morph, Quality, Metallic, Color, Save 4K |
Most pages also have Pause, Save and small share icons.
Fractal Studio (Explore)
Fractal Studio is the workbench: pick a fractal type, choose how it is coloured, then pan, zoom, rotate and save. Everything below is on its control panel.
Getting around
| Do this | To get this |
|---|---|
| Drag | Move the picture (one finger on a touchscreen) |
| Scroll wheel / pinch | Zoom in and out around the pointer |
| C | Show or hide the control panel (the ⚙ gear does the same) |
| R | Regenerate: a fresh random view and colours |
| A | Start or stop Animate |
| F | Fullscreen |
The buttons at the bottom of the panel are Deep Zoom, Animate, Regenerate, Reset view (back to the starting view of the current type), Share, Save, Save Image and Fullscreen.
The fractal types
Choose one with the Type menu. Some types add extra sliders, which appear only when they apply. Hover over a control to see a short hint.
| Type | What you are looking at |
|---|---|
| Julia | The classic Julia set. Julia real and Julia imag pick which one; tiny moves change the whole shape. |
| Newton | Three coloured basins that meet in spiralling filigree. Twist bends the boundaries into spirals. |
| Multibrot | The Mandelbrot family. Power (2–6) adds more branches. Weave morphs it into the Julia set of the spot you have moved to. |
| Lyapunov | Swallow-shaped ridges from a population-growth rule. Sequence sets the pattern in which the two growth rates alternate. |
| Magnet | A smooth, curling fractal from a physics model. Works with Deep Zoom. |
| Sierpinski | The famous triangle, drawn on the same canvas. |
| Inverted Julia | A Julia set turned inside out, so the infinite outer detail gathers around the centre. |
| Lambda | A warped relative of the Mandelbrot set with a deep navy interior. |
| Newton Poly | Newton basins built from a random set of roots. Regenerate rolls new roots. |
| Multi-Julia | Julia sets with extra arms (Power 3–6). |
| Inverted Mandelbrot | The Mandelbrot set viewed inside out: a shield-like shape with the set streaming out to infinity. |
| Inverted Multi-Julia | Multi-Julia turned inside out. |
| Inverted Phoenix | Phoenix shapes turned inside out. Feedback P sets how strongly each step remembers the one before. |
| Inverted Lambda | Lambda turned inside out. |
| Inverted Nova | Nova basins turned inside out. Power sets the number of basins; Relax real and Relax imag tune how the boundaries twist. |
| Nova Mandelbrot | A Mandelbrot-style map of the Nova family, with the same Power and Relax sliders. |
Finishes
Finish is the colouring method. It applies to Julia, Multibrot, Lambda, Multi-Julia and the inverted types (except the Nova pair).
| Standard | Colour follows how quickly each point escapes. Clean and crisp. |
| Triangle average | A softer, cloudier look that blends how the point wanders on its way out. |
| Circle trap Ellipse trap Hyperbola trap | Colour follows how close each point comes to an imaginary circle, ellipse or hyperbola. Curve size changes the size of that curve. These make the most abstract pictures. |
Colour and light
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Palette | Over 200 choices: Hue cycle (full spectrum), single metals (Gold, Chrome, Copper and many more), pairs of metals, and sixteen four-colour blends. |
| Metal | From vivid colour (0) to full polished-metal shading (1). |
| Texture | Smooth, Streaks, Rings, or Classic (flat), which drops the lighting for plain flat colour. |
| Style | Soft is the original look. Rich has deeper metallic shading. |
| Color | Slides the whole palette around, changing which colours land where. |
| Trap | Sets how tightly the shiny bands wrap around the fractal. |
| Detail | How hard the page works on fine structure. Higher is sharper near the edges but slower. Zoomed in far, raise it. |
| Highlights, Midtones, Shadows | Fine-tune the brightness of the bright, middle and dark parts of the picture. |
| Look | An on-screen grain and vignette for atmosphere. It changes what you see, not what you save. |
Rotate, Grid and Deep Zoom
Rotate and Grid: straightening a fractal
Rotate turns the picture around the centre of the screen. The slider has small flat stops at 0, 90, 180, 270 and 360 degrees, so a click or drag near a tick mark lands exactly on that quarter turn. For tiny adjustments, click the slider and use the arrow keys (hold Shift for extra-fine steps). To line a fractal up precisely, turn on Grid:
- Centre lines draws one vertical and one horizontal line through the exact middle.
- Grid and Fine grid add a square grid with the centre lines emphasised.
Turning the grid on centres the fractal on the lines, and the scroll wheel then zooms about that centre instead of the pointer. You can still drag to move the picture whenever you wish. The lines are only a guide: they never appear in saved pictures or shared links. Pick a feature that should be straight (an arm, a spine, a symmetry line) and turn Rotate until it lines up.
Deep Zoom
Normal zoom stays sharp until roughly ten to a hundred thousand times, then the picture breaks into blocks because the numbers run out of precision. Deep Zoom switches to a high-precision method that keeps going far further. It works with Julia, Multibrot, Lambda (using the Standard finish) and Magnet. It takes a moment to refine each new view, and the picture sharpens as it goes.
Animate, Regenerate and Reset
Animate keeps the picture moving. Regenerate gives a fresh random view and colour scheme. Reset view returns to the starting view for the current type.
Saving and printing
Save writes the picture at the size of your window. For anything bigger, use Save as and Save Image:
- Shape: Landscape 16:9, Portrait 9:16 or Square 1:1.
- Size: 4K (3840 pixels on the long side of a landscape or portrait picture) or 8K (7680 pixels). Square pictures are 2880 or 5760 pixels each way.
Your graphics card sets the largest picture it can make. If it cannot manage the size you picked, the page quietly makes the biggest one it can. At 300 dots per inch, a 4K landscape prints at about 12.8 × 7.2 inches and 8K at about 25.6 × 14.4 inches.
Print-ready on a white background
Use Cut-out to turn part of the picture pure white, so that only the fractal is left. It works with the types that have a plain area around the fractal: Julia, Multibrot, Lambda, Multi-Julia and the inverted types (except the Nova pair).
- Choose Remove outside for a normal fractal. The plain area far from it turns white. Raise Cut-out level until only the fractal remains, and use Cut-out edge to choose between a crisp and a soft fade.
- For the inverted types (such as Inverted Mandelbrot, the shield) the fractal is the compact shape and the endless surround is the set itself, so choose Remove inside.
- Turn Look to None while you preview. It greys the white on screen, though never in the saved file.
- Choose a shape and 8K, then press Save Image. The white is applied in the saved picture, with smooth edges.
Sharing a view
Press Share to copy a link. It stores the type, colours, position, zoom, rotation and every slider, so the page reopens exactly as you left it. The same panel has buttons for Reddit, X, Facebook and email. The grid lines and Look are not part of a link. Deep Zoom views keep their own long link so the extreme position is not lost.
Tips and troubleshooting
- The picture is slow. Lower Detail, close other tabs, or use a computer with a stronger graphics card. Heavy types (Newton Poly, the Nova pair) cost the most.
- I see blocks when zoomed in. You have reached the limit of normal zoom. Use Deep Zoom if the type supports it.
- The picture is too busy. Lower Detail, try the Standard finish, or zoom in a little: fine structure becomes calmer as it gets room.
- I can't zoom out any further. Each type has a limit. The inverted types allow the widest view.
- The saved picture looks different from the screen. The on-screen Look (grain and vignette) and the Grid are not saved. Everything else is.
- Nothing shows. The site needs WebGL, which every current browser has. If it is switched off, turn on hardware acceleration in your browser settings.
Have a favourite view to show? The Reddit community at r/fractals loves a good share link.