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CS 368-2 (2012 Spring) — Day 12 Homework

Due Tuesday, May 1, at the start of class.

Goal

Create a pretty image by running a Mandelbrot generator on several “tiles”, which can stitched together to create a single, large image.

Essentially, this is an exercise in parameter sweeps, both writing the Python code that defines the tiles and then generating the Condor submit file.

Background Information

The Mandelbrot set is a mathematical construct that can be used to create pretty pictures. Here is one image that I created from my homework solution:

Running goatbrot

We are not going to write the code to generate the images, as much fun as that might be… Instead, we will use a separate program, goatbrot, to generate the image tiles. The challenge is to run goatbrot with the right command-line arguments, so that we can stitch together the resulting tiles into a single image.

Here is a typical set of command-line arguments to the goatbrot program (these particular arguments should generate the image above without any tiling):

goatbrot -s 600,600 -c -0.70625,0.35625 -w 0.0625 -i 1000000 -o mandelbrot.ppm

The arguments are as follows:

-s 600,600 The size of the output image, here 600 × 600 pixels
-c -0.70625,0.35625 The center of the space to draw, in the coordinate system of the Mandelbrot set; nearly all interesting images lie within x = (–2, 0.5) and y = (–1, 1)
-w 0.0625 The width of the space to draw, in the coordinate system of the Mandelbrot set; note that “zooming in” is equivalent to setting a small width — the rendered image will still fill the entire image size set by the -s option
-i 1000000 The maximum number of iterations to calculate for each pixel; big numbers tend to run longer and produce more details in the image

If you want to learn more about the program, check out its website and/or run the following command on our submit machine:

/usr/local/bin/goatbrot -h

Tiles

Now, consider what happens when we want to generate the same image but to spread out the work by dividing the one big square into smaller square tiles. For example, if I create 2×2 tiles, I would get the following four images (black border lines added for clarity, not part of images):

We can identify our tiles two different ways. First, we can assign numbers to rows and to columns (each counting from 0, of course, because we are programmers!), and identify a given tile by its row and column numbers. Here is a diagram of (row, column) numbers for our 2×2 tiling:

(0, 0)(0, 1)
(1, 0)(1, 1)

And then for the stitching program, it is useful to assign each tile a unique serial number in order. The tile numbers start at the upper-left corner, and increment as we count from left-to-right, top-to-bottom. Here is a diagram of the tile numbers for our 2×2 tiling:

12
34

Calculating Tile Arguments

Given a set of Mandelbrot coordinates (center and width), the number of tiles, and the overall image size in pixels, it is possible to calculate all of the command-line arguments to the goatbrot program for each tile. For example, the four goatbrot commands used to produce the image tiles above are:

goatbrot -s 200,200 -c -0.721875,0.371875 -w 0.03125 -i 1000000 -o tile-1.ppm
goatbrot -s 200,200 -c -0.690625,0.371875 -w 0.03125 -i 1000000 -o tile-2.ppm
goatbrot -s 200,200 -c -0.721875,0.340625 -w 0.03125 -i 1000000 -o tile-3.ppm
goatbrot -s 200,200 -c -0.690625,0.340625 -w 0.03125 -i 1000000 -o tile-4.ppm

The necessary math is summarized below. First, we need to define some values:

Here is how to calculate each argument to goatbrot for the tile at (r, c):

See below for advice on setting the -i option and on formatting the -o option.

Tasks

Armed with all of that background information, your task is to write a Python script that will prepare a set of Condor jobs to produce a corresponding set of Mandelbrot image tiles. At the end of the assignment, I will show you the command to stitch the image files together; for now, you will need to run this command by hand after all of the Condor jobs finish.

Your script will need to take a bunch of arguments that define what to draw:

./homework_12.py -0.70625 0.35625 0.0625 400 2

The arguments, in order, correspond to our mathematical values above:

Note: Your script must work with other values for these arguments! The values above match the examples in the Background section, so that you can check your work, but I should be able to run your script with any reasonable input values. Nonetheless, is is probably best to use tile dimenions (n) that are powers of 2, and to use image sizes (in pixels) that are evenly divisible by the tile dimenions.

With that information, your script can prepare the Condor jobs and perhaps even offer to submit them. If you would like some further suggestions for doing this assignment, keep reading; otherwise skip to the next section.

Some thoughts on how to approach this assignment:

  1. Do some design work first. Mostly, try to answer questions like the following:

    For the first question, note that it is best to have all of the output files (one from each job) end up in the same dircetory. Doing so makes it easier to stitch all files together into a single image.

  2. For the coding, start by trying to write the code that iterates through all of the tiles. How many parameters do you have? What does each one mean? What is each one’s range (start, stop, step)? Try to stick with simple integer parameters — as seen above, we can calculate the actual command-line arguments to goatbrot from simple integers.
  3. For each value of your parameter(s), call a function, say, compute_arguments, which takes your parameter(s) as arguments. For now, have the function simply print the parameter(s), so you can check them.
  4. Now, expand compute_arguments so that, instead of simply printing the parameter(s), it returns a single string which is the complete set of goatbrot command-line arguments that correspond to the parameter(s). Check your arguments against the examples above, and make sure that your code works in other cases, too.

    For the number of iterations to run, just pick a number. Unless you use very small values for w (and hence zoom in deeply into the image), a number around 10000 will work fine. Even an iteration count of 1000000 (1 million) runs quite fast in most cases.

    Name your output files so that they sort in the correct tile order, shown above. Do this by including the tile number itself in the filename. For longer tile numbers, pad the tile number with leading zeroes, which is easy with the % formatting codes:

    output_filename = 'tile-%04d.ppm' % (tile_number)
  5. The rest is easy: Make your script generate your submit file(s) and any other files needed, then (optionally) submit the submit file(s).

    Important note: In your submit file, make sure the executable line is exactly as follows:

    executable = /usr/local/bin/goatbrot

Stitching Your Image Tiles

Once you have your output files, it would be nice to stitch them together to see the whole image. For now, just do this by hand. On our submit machine, run the following command in the directory that contains your PPM output files:

montage tile-*.ppm -mode Concatenate -tile 2x2 homework-12.png

Be sure to replace the 2x2 part with the exact number of tiles (horizontal and vertical) that you used. Also, the homework-12.png filename is the output filename of the stitching step, and so it can be whatever you like.

Copy the resulting final image file back to your own computer and open it in a graphics program or a web browser. Did it turn out OK? If the tiling looks wrong, then go back over your script, your output filenames, and your montage command for errors.

Explore different coordinates (center point and width arguments) with your script. Send your favorite coordinates and/or best single image to the group mailing list, if you like! If you do so, please restrict your emailed image sizes to 500×500 pixels or so.

Extra Challenges

Some ideas for extra learning:

Reminders

Do the work yourself, consulting reasonable reference materials as needed. Any resource that provides a complete solution or offers significant material assistance toward a solution not OK to use. Asking the instructor for help is OK, asking other students for help is not. All standard UW policies concerning student conduct (esp. UWS 14) and information technology apply to this course and assignment.

Hand In

A printout of your script, ideally on a single sheet of paper (double-sided is great!). Be sure to put your own name at the top of each piece of paper, regardless; identifying your work is important, or you may not receive appropriate credit.

If you like, also add one or more sets of coordinates that make nice images!