Patterns of Polygons
The Patterns of Polygons Stuff
Triangles, squares, and hexagons are the only polygons which tile to
fill a plane exactly.
I asked myself, well, what would happen if you
tried to fill a plane with other sorts of polygons, say
pentagons or septagons, by starting with one and connecting others to
the edges? You would end up with gaps, of course, and probably
generate an interesting pattern. The pattern would depend the order
in which the edges are picked, as well as the type of polygons used.
To investigate, I wrote a C program which generates PostScript output.
The image files here were generated from that output with GhostScript.
- Septagons (246k) 640x640 JPEG.
A pattern made entirely of septagons. I start in the center with a
very ordered pattern, and introduce randomness as it radiates outward.
- Yet Another Pattern of Polygons
(271k) 640x640 JPEG.
This was my first one to incorporate polygons of different types in the
same design. The order of edge picking is random, but the number of sides
of the polygons generated follows the pattern 3,4,5,6,7,6,5,4.
- Self-Portrait #1
(387k) 567x877 JPEG.
Here is my first self-portrait. I generated an pattern of polygons
using the same algorithm as YAPP (above), and used a QuickTake image
of myself to select the color for each poly.
- Spiral (278k) 640x480 JPEG.
Pentagons and septagons are here arrayed in entwining spiral arms,
determined by a probabilistic algorithm.
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