Seamless Voronoi Texture (11 Nov 2023)

[frio]

Effects->Render->Seamless Voronoi Texture

 

Download:

F_SeamlessVoronoi.zip

 

Description:

Another seamless tiling effect that's useful for 3D texturing, Voronoi tessellation. Similarity to the Cell Texture plugin is not coincidental, mostly the same technique behind the scenes, just a different selection of styles and options. Most importantly this version can render tiles, not just smooth cells, which can be very handy for things like metals.

 

Basically, the effect lays out a grid of dots, displaces them randomly, then computes the distance to the nearest dot(s) for each pixel, turning them into tiles or cells. Uses the primary and secondary colors, currently no other color styles.

 

 

Demo image:

Settings:

• Horizontal & vertical resolution: how many cells per column/row to use in the base grid.
• Link vertical to horizontal: uses only the horizontal slider for resolution.
• Hexagonal base grid: offsets every other row so that the base grid becomes hexagonal. Slightly weird with an odd number of rows.
• Cell style: 5 options:

1. Antialiased tiles.
2. Sharp tiles.
3. Melded tiles - blends 2 neighboring tiles together.
4. Distance - like the Cell Texture plugin, renders the distance from the middle point.
5. Centers only - renders only the dots themselves. Not very interesting, but could be used for fairly evenly spaced random dots.

• Distance function: 5 options:

1. Euclidean - the everyday notion of distance.
2. Maximum - chooses the maximum of the horizontal and vertical distance values.
3. Taxicab - sums up the horizontal and vertical distance values.
4. Minimum - chooses the minimum of the horizontal and vertical distance values.
5. Geometric mean - multiplies the horizontal and vertical distance values together, then takes their square root. Starry.

• Precision: how many nearby grid dots to check for distance. Normal is fine for most situations. Some combinations of options (mismatched horizontal/vertical resolution, high jumble, some styles) require using high precision, but it is much slower than normal. Low precision produces even more glitches, but the glitches themselves can be interesting so I left it in.
• Jumble: how much the initial dots are moved from their precise rectangular or hexagonal grid positions. If left at 0, the grid is perfectly non-random, only the colors are randomized.
• Randomize: generate another pattern.

 

Notes:

• Hexagonal base grid: not very noticeable unless jumble is low.
• Antialiased tiles: may be blurry at some edge cases and weird shapes. Use sharp tiles at higher resolution and scale down manually if it's too distracting.
• Melded tiles: may not be seamless (oh no, false advertising). More reliably seamless at low precision.
• Minimum and geometric mean distances: usually requires high precision.
• Jumble: Going outside the -1 to 1 range can be glitchy and require high precision mode.

 

[BlastOfBN]

Oooh, shiny!

 

You should put together a plugin pack!

[frio]

I thought about that, maybe if/when I get a couple more plugins together. Trying to think of the effects that I often need, but don't have directly available (requires many steps, or an external program) and seeing if I can put them together myself.

[lynxster4]

@frio You are on a roll! Just played with this and I see many possibilities. 

One question though; Centers Only gives me wee little dots on the background that you can hardly see; almost looks like a star field.

Anyway, thank you!  😊

[frio]

25 minutes ago, lynxster4 said:

One question though; Centers Only gives me wee little dots on the background that you can hardly see; almost looks like a star field

Yeah, it draws only the sole pixels that determine the grid underlying the effect. It was actually what I started with as a debug feature and left it in since it might be useful for getting roughly evenly distributed pixels (star field, like you said).