prototile-js

Try out the Prototile tiling generator!

Prototile generates self-similar substitution tilings based on squares of different colors. At each iteration, each square of the existing tiling is replaced by a set of squares (here called a substitution tile) based on the color of the original square. For iteration 0, an initial set of squares must be specified.

Additional information about substitution tilings can be found on Wikipedia and on Dr. Natalie Priebe Frank's tiling page, which also features a Matlab-based relative of Prototile.

Prototile uses D3 to bind the tilings it creates to objects in an HTML document. Voronoi diagrams of tilings are generated by the d3-voronoi library.

Instructions

• After adjusting parameters, a new tiling will be generated. See Tiling Parameters for descriptions of the parameters.
• Click on the Initial or Substitutions tiles to change the color of individual squares. Each click will cycle a square's color to the next color in the list of colors between 0 and # colors - 1. If Mod Substitutions is selected, the substitutions will be determined from a single substitution tile, so that each element of substitution tile i+1 will be 1 + the corresponding element of tile i, modulo the number of colors.
• Click on the main tiling to shift a copy of the tiling over the main tiling. The upper left square of the copy tiling will be placed over the square that is clicked in the main tiling. This will produce new patterns in the overlapping region of the two tilings. Shifts can also be achieved by editing the Offset Row and Offset Column parameters in the form. Half-step shifts are allowed. NOTE that offsets are not automatically filled into the URL parameters. Double click on the main tiling to fill offsets into the URL parameters.
• When changes are made, the URL will be filled in with the current form parameters. This URL can be bookmarked to retrieve the altered tiling. The form parameter names and formats are described in the Tiling Parameters section.
• Clicking the Voronoi checkbox will switch to a Voronoi diagram based on the tiling. The points used to generate the diagram are the center positions of the nonzero color tiles (colors 1 to # colors - 1). Shifting a copy of the Voronoi diagram is also supported.

Tiling Parameters

Form Parameter	URL Parameter	Description
# Colors	numColors	The number of colors. For more than two colors, additional colors will be interpolated between the min color value and the max color value.
Initial Size	initialSize	The number of rows and columns in the initial tiling.
Square Size	squareSize	The width and height of each square in pixels.
# Iterations	iterations	The number of substitution iterations. At each iteration, each square will be replaced by a substitution tile defined in the Substitutions section. Beware that increasing the number of iterations increases the size of the tiling exponentially.
Substitution Size	substSize	The number of rows and columns in each substitution tile.
Transparency	transparency	The transparency of the colors used in the main tiling. This is used when a copy of the main tiling is shifted over the main tiling to produce interesting patterns. Set to 1 for no transparency.
Min Color	minColor	The minimum color (default white). As a URL parameter (and in Safari), this is represented as a # (encoded as %23) followed by 6 hexadecimal digits.
Max Color	maxColor	The maximum color (default black). As a URL parameter (and in Safari), this is represented as a # (encoded as %23) followed by 6 hexadecimal digits.
Offset Row	offsetRow	The row offset of the copy tiling displayed over the main tiling. The upper left square of the copy tiling will be placed on this row of the main tiling. Half steps between 0 and the tiling height are supported.
Offset Column	offsetColumn	The column offset of the copy tiling displayed over the main tiling. The upper left square of the copy tiling will be placed on this column of the main tiling. Half steps between 0 and the tiling width are supported.
Rotate	rotate	The number of degrees to rotate the copy tiling displayed over the main tiling.
Voronoi	useVoronoi	The switch to display a Voronoi diagram based on the generated tiling. For the URL parameter, a value of "on" indicates the Voronoi diagram will be displayed.
Mod Substitutions	modSubsts	Generate substitution tiles from a single tile, so that each element of tile i+1 is 1 + the corresponding element of tile i, modulo the number of colors. For the URL parameter, a value of "on" indicates that mod substitutions will be used.
Initial	initial	The matrix to be used for the initial tiling. As a URL parameter, this is represented by a string of digits between 0 (min color) and # colors - 1. Commas (encoded as %2C) may be used to separate the rows of the matrix, but are not required.
Substitutions	substitutions	The matrices to be used for the substitution tiles. As a URL parameter, this is represented by a string of digits between 0 (min color) and # colors - 1. Commas (encoded as %2C) may be used to separate the rows of each substitution tile and to separate substitution tiles from each other, but they are not required.