development

MathPaint 1.0 will feature Image Builder Wizard for step-by-step generative graphics

screen shot of image builder wizard in MathPaint

Generating graphics from mathematical models can seem daunting, but almost everyone loves the cool symmetry, fractals, and unexpected shapes that math can create.

MathPaint, the flagship generative graphics app from Mathaesthetics, will make it simple to create amazing mathematical images with an innovative Image Builder Wizard interface. With a step-by-step creative activity using a subset of the full MathPaint options anyone can generate amazing images on their first launch of MathPaint, with virtually no learning curve.The Image Builder Wizard lets you get familiar with all of the major areas of MathPaint – plots, geometry, fractals, noise, image effects – so that transitioning to the more powerful document interface will be easier.

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Fractal Friday 2020.02.07

This week I’m sharing the results of a cool new feature in MathPaint: fractals warped by real-valued functions. The application now supports defining a custom real-valued function that is applied during each iterative evaluation to the real part of the complex number ‘z’, before z is squared. The possible effects are endless – from slight … Read moreFractal Friday 2020.02.07

Hello World, from MathPaint! (Preview)

If you’ve been following Mathaesthetics posts you’ve seen a variety of images shared – different types of generated art from fractals to repeated 2D plots to vector fields and scalar fields and more. All images on this blog are created by our flagship software product, which has been in development since November 2019. Today for … Read moreHello World, from MathPaint! (Preview)

Dev notebook: an enum alternative to GKState / GKStateMachine

I worked on my first GameplayKit project earlier this year and there were things I liked about the lightweight, general state-machine model provided by the GKState and GKStateMachine classes. However I also found a few odd patterns in these classes: their implementation without using enumeration values for states, the inelegant (StateClass).class.self syntax model required by … Read moreDev notebook: an enum alternative to GKState / GKStateMachine

Painting with Trigonometry

I’m excited to share today’s image generated from the application under development: It’s a pretty organic background-pattern sort of texture, but it highlights a few cool things about the app, which is focused on creating beautiful images with mathematical techniques. First, the brush strokes! All of these strokes are ‘points’ drawn with an extra-wide calligraphy … Read morePainting with Trigonometry

Dev notebook: brush-like drawing in Swift, without CGPattern

I’m spending a lot of time in Cocoa drawing and Core Graphics lately, working in Swift. The API around the Core Graphics CGPattern object in Swift is a little challenging – it requires C callbacks and unsafe pointers for basic pattern-creation and drawing functionality. It also doesn’t work exactly as I’d like it to; I … Read moreDev notebook: brush-like drawing in Swift, without CGPattern