More zebrawood laser-cut art (at least in simulation)

[mattbell]

I really liked how my last round of designs came out, and now I'm interesting in trying something more sophisticated.

These spirals are pretty, but I want to create more complex patterns:



Creating more complex patterns of the style I'm envisioning will require some math though.  As a result, I've written some software that allows me to generate vector fields that correspond to various equations of interest.  Some of the equations are inspired by physical phenomena (eg magnetic fields).  Other equations are designed to create stars, spirals, and waves.  I can superimpose these elements to create more complex patterns:

 

The software chops up the field into areas of roughly the same orientation -- these pieces are destined to be cut from a single piece of wood.
I quickly realized I could write a simulator that took bits of a picture of an actual piece of zebrawood to see what the actual piece would look like, saving hours of work.  For example:

 

Here are some other designs I played with:

 
 
It remains to be seen how hard it will be to actually create these, but I like how they look now.

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I also realized why I like this kind of art so much.  It mixes the rich sensory experience of organic material with the more precise beauty of mathematics.  The experience of looking at and feeling the actual zebrawood spiral is something that doesn't really come across in pictures -- the wood has all kinds of interesting specular highlights and subsurface scattering properties that make it really pop.

Comments

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the whole thing was like 4-5 hours at most.