The Koch snowflake is a famous fractal.
So is the Cantor set.
Less famous, maybe, is Cantor dust, a version of the Cantor set made with squares instead of lines, which apparently earned it a much cooler name.
But as far as I know, we have no Cantor snowflake.
Since it’s Christmas, and since, in the odd quiet moments between holiday noise, Daniel Shiffman’s Nature of Code has been keeping me company, I wondered if we could make a Cantor snowflake.
Here’s what I came up with.
As a bonus, it contains the Koch snowflake inside of it! I didn’t expect that.
I also rendered a Cantor snowflake PDF, which has a couple extra generations. It could make a nice bookmark.
Here’s the sourcecode, which is also running on openprocessing:
void setup() { size(1450, 300); background(255); noStroke(); fill(0); cantorSnowflake(0, height/2, 140, 280); } void cantorSnowflake(float x, float y, float length, float sideStep) { if (length < 0.1) return; pushMatrix(); hexagon(x, y, length); translate(sideStep, 0); for (int i = 0; i < 6; i++) { PVector point = vector(i * THIRD_PI, length * 2 / 3); cantorSnowflake(point.x, point.y, length / 3, sideStep); } popMatrix(); } void hexagon(float centerX, float centerY, float length) { translate(centerX, centerY); beginShape(); for (int i = 0; i < 6; i++) { hexPoint(vector(i * THIRD_PI, length)); } endShape(CLOSE); } void hexPoint(PVector v) { vertex(v.x, v.y); } PVector vector(float rads, float length) { return new PVector(cos(rads) * length, sin(rads) * length); }
Happy Christmas!
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