Are there mathematical methods to creating graphics?

Question

I came across this page a long time ago Steve A Baker And he mentions how one of the images on an earlier video game he created was done using a simple adder and math.

How do you do this kind of thing? It would be really cool to create images mathematically. I have wondered (and googled) but only found descriptions about fractals. But I don't think this is a fractal. Thanks.

Answer 1

Procedural image generation is well known in the demoscene community. You can refer to some of the open source demos for a variety of techniques.

Answer 2

Just a quick example

Suppose you have a 200x200 RGB image, and you define each color component as follows:

 Red   = Sin[i/200]  
 Green = Tan[j/300]  
 Blue  = Sin[i j/300]

The result is: