mtrc
@mtrc

If you're having trouble seeing the full interface, click here for the sketch.

Today's work is a tool for making L-Systems! It's limited though, to try and keep it a bit lighter and breezier. However, even simple stuff with this can be tricky, so I wrote a guide. I'll paste it below. Just one more day left! I hope you enjoy making stuff with this, let me know if you create anything cool (and sorry if your browser crashes, in advance).


Simple Tweaking

Switch Colors: There are a few palettes I selected from LoSpec's palette list, and a small % chance of a rare variant of each too. Click to cycle through.

Line Thickness: Slide this to change the thickness of the lines. At high values, there won't be any space in the patterns, which can great interesting overlaps! If you change Line Thickness you need to redraw the pattern, so hit the Regenerate button (bottom right).

Pattern Size: This affects how big one 'unit' of line is. You can think of this like a zoom - if the pattern doesn't fill the screen, try increasing this. If you can't see all the pattern, decrease it. If you change Pattern Size you need to redraw the pattern, so hit the Regenerate button (bottom right).

Animate: If you check this box, when you click Regenerate you'll see each part of the pattern drawn out in sequence. This can be pretty cool! But it's also quite slow. You can uncheck it and hit Regenerate to see the full thing again instantly.

Blob Mode: This changes the drawing from drawing lines, to circles. It changes the patterns a lot - you lose the structure, but you see more of the colour palettes cycling. Try it out! Hit Regenerate after changing this to see the effect.

More Complex

Switch Ruleset: Each pattern is made by a ruleset. I've included a few standard ones. Clicking this button changes the rules and draws a new pattern. This means it'll erase your old one! Some patterns might not display nicely, check out 'Nudging' below.

Nudging: Pressing the arrow keys (you may need to click the sketch to focus the window) will 'nudge' the pattern around. This is useful if the pattern has appeared off the edge, or you just want to put it into a nicer position.

Advanced Weird Stuff

Recipe: This is the starting point for the pattern. If you've not used L-Systems before, each symbol in the starting recipe is turned into multiple other symbols, and so on and so on, and then the final list of symbols is turned into a drawing. This means a very small change in the recipe can completely change the output!

You can add any symbols here that are in the list of valid ingredients, but not all symbols will affect all rulesets. Also note that adding a lot of symbols can unexpectedly explode the pattern and maybe even crash the browser tab - be careful and don't add more than one or two before testing!

Here are some tips for experimenting:

  • means "rotate the pattern clockwise"
  • means "rotate the pattern anticlockwise" F usually means "draw a line/circle and move in the direction you're facing"

Try adding a + or - to the start of a pattern and see what happens. If none of this makes sense, don't worry - L Systems are really weird and I never understood them when I first learned about them! People spend ages perfecting a pattern.


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