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Gennaro
Gennaro

Posted on • Updated on

Urpflanze: a javascript library for creative coding

For some time now, I have been feeling the need to use the code not for commercial purposes, but purely for fun.

This is why I am approaching the world of creative coding.

One big difficulty I immediately encountered was the lack of knowledge of linear algebra and trigonometry, and this is the reason why I decided to develop a library that would make the approach easier even for the less experienced user.

Mandalas have always fascinated me, so I started with simple shapes such as lines and polygons, and I worked on how to distribute them on a circumference.

Urpflanze

I focused on managing every single repetition and encapsulating the generated shapes, which allowed me to create new forms starting from the previous and simpler ones.

In addition to circular repetitions, I also added the possibility of creating matrices and some effects during the drawing phase, such as viewing the previous frames or disabling the deletion of the canvas at each frame.

Perfect to create images or animations, it can be used for texture generation, as support to other vector graphics software (thanks to SVGExporter), or to print with Penplotter.

At the moment the roadmap available are:

  • Documentation for other services (e.g. DrawerSVG)
  • a web-based editor already under development (a very old version is at this link https://gifted-booth-1ad22e.netlify.app/)
  • Rendering in WebGL
  • Audio library to create sounds from shapes and vice versa

Let me know what you think about this :)

GitHub logo urpflanze-org / urpflanze

A library for developers who want to approach to creative coding, artists who want to approach coding and for those who find it fun to play with math.

Synopsis

This library is based on the Urpflanze package for generate the scene.

It deals with creating two-dimensional shapes, repeating them, manipulating them point by point and encapsulating them.

Motivations

The creation of this library comes from the need to create simple APIs for manage the repetition of primitive shapes and the possibility of applying transformations to each of them, applying transformations on the points avoiding the use of canvas transformations.

Another need - which then became one of the main features - was to be able to encapsulate the result of a generation and manage it as if it were a new shape.

Donate

I am trying to create a tool for those who want to approach the world of programming or for programmers who want to approach the world of creative coding.

I have spent a lot of time and will spend more to support this project I…

Docs and Examples

Top comments (13)

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anthonygushu profile image
Anthony Gushu

holy shit is this cool. The save file format is genius, too. I'm super impressed by how many points and line segments you can manipulate at once without any lag - way better than what you get in p5.

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anthonygushu profile image
Anthony Gushu

also WOAH just noticed that vertex callback in the old web editor - that's really creative

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genbs profile image
Gennaro

I'll tell you a trick: then copy and paste the SVG (text) too, so you can also animate with texts and other shapes.
The vertexCallback is also very useful with a "subdivided" buffer (genbs.github.io/urpflanze/#/en/Ver...).
Have you tried clicking the "Make Shape" button in the layers panel? This is one of the most interesting features in my opinion (encapsulation)
:)

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anthonygushu profile image
Anthony Gushu • Edited

Oh yeah, I've been reading through all the docs since I found this - by far the coolest project I've come across in months tbh. That encapsulated layer system is really neat

I've been building on a generative art editor inspired by a Photoshop/Illustrator kind of workflow using paper.js, but I'm honestly going to switch the engine to this and try to get involved with contributing - especially with the ability to export as SVG for plotting and scaling to whatever canvas you want.

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genbs profile image
Gennaro

These days I also publish the editor code, so you can check it out.
For anything do not hesitate to contact me :)

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genbs profile image
Gennaro

it is quite powerful, but some videos are rendered.
Surely if I can write a drawer based on webgl it will be even more powerful

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anthonygushu profile image
Anthony Gushu

Yeah if you achieve fully mutable, real-time rendering, that would make the whole experience crazy interactive with that shiny new native-app feel.
Lately, I've been reading a lot about people experimenting with compiling OpenGL/WebGL into wasm and seeing some substantial performance boosts over out of the box WebGL. This is a cool example I came across

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genbs profile image
Gennaro

It would be really cool to do something like this! Meanwhile, I study better the webgl and how to create a drawer with them. Let's keep up to date!

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artydev profile image
artydev

Greatissime
Thank you very much

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genbs profile image
Gennaro

Thanks to you for the feedback. Ii hope it will be useful to someone :)

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antonioru profile image
Antonio Russo

Super nice!

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genbs profile image
Gennaro

❤️❤️❤️❤️

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ziizium profile image
Habdul Hazeez

This is interesting.