Procedural generation tools for Nelson.
tessera provides generators for noise, fractals, terrain, cellular patterns,
sampling and structure synthesis. The native kernels are written in portable C++
and do not depend on third-party libraries. Public functions are exposed under
the tessera. namespace.
run('loader.m')
R = tessera.mandelbrot(800, 300);
imagesc(R); axis image off; colormap(tessera.colormap('fire'))
 Perlin noise |
 fBm terrain |
 ridged multifractal |
 domain warp |
 Worley cells |
 Voronoi regions |
 3-D fBm slices |
 DLA cluster |
 Lloyd relaxation |
 Wang tiles |
 Gabor noise |
 L-system turtle |
 Mandelbrot |
 Julia |
 reaction-diffusion |
 hydraulic erosion |
 maze |
 rule 30 automaton |
Load the module from a checkout:
run('loader.m')
Unload it from the current Nelson session:
removemodule('tessera')
Rebuild the native gateway and help files from source:
run('builder.m')
A C/C++ compiler is required for builder.m.
Noise fields are normalized to [0, 1]. Size arguments use these forms:
sz: scalar square field[rows cols]: 2-D field[rows cols planes]: 3-D volume
Main noise functions accept their positional form and name-value options such as
'frequency', 'lacunarity', 'gain', 'seed' and 'seamless'.
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
tessera.perlin(sz, frequency, seed) |
Perlin gradient noise. Options: 'frequency', 'seed', 'seamless'. |
tessera.simplex(sz, frequency, seed) |
Simplex noise. Options: 'frequency', 'seed', 'seamless'. |
tessera.perlin3(sz, frequency, seed) |
3-D Perlin volume. |
tessera.simplex3(sz, frequency, seed) |
3-D simplex volume. |
tessera.value_noise(sz, frequency, seed) |
Value noise. |
tessera.worley(sz, cells, seed) |
Worley noise. Options: F1, F2, F2-F1, euclidean, manhattan, chebyshev, seamless. |
tessera.gabor_noise(sz, impulses, frequency, seed) |
Sparse Gabor-kernel noise. Also accepts 'impulses', 'frequency' and 'seed'. |
tessera.wavelet_noise(sz, octaves, seed) |
Band-pass wavelet-style octave noise. Also accepts 'octaves' and 'seed'. |
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
tessera.fbm(sz, octaves, seed) |
Fractional Brownian motion. Options: 'frequency', 'lacunarity', 'gain', 'seed', 'seamless'. |
tessera.fbm3(sz, octaves, seed) |
3-D fractional Brownian motion. |
tessera.ridged(sz, octaves, seed) |
Ridged multifractal. |
tessera.billow(sz, octaves, seed) |
Billow noise. |
tessera.turbulence(sz, octaves, seed) |
Absolute-value fBm. |
tessera.domain_warp(sz, octaves, strength, seed) |
Domain-warped fBm. |
These functions return a smooth iteration count. 0 means the point did not
escape during the configured iteration budget.
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
tessera.mandelbrot(sz, maxiter, region) |
Mandelbrot set. |
tessera.julia(sz, c, maxiter, region) |
Julia set, with c as a complex value or [re im]. |
tessera.burningship(sz, maxiter, region) |
Burning Ship fractal. |
[root, iter] = tessera.newton(sz, maxiter, region) |
Newton fractal for z^3 - 1. |
region is [xmin xmax ymin ymax].
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
tessera.diamond_square(n, roughness, seed) |
(2^n+1) by (2^n+1) heightfield. Supports 'seamless'. |
tessera.erode(heightfield, droplets, seed) |
Hydraulic erosion pass on an existing heightfield. |
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
tessera.gameoflife(grid, generations) |
Conway's game of life on a toroidal grid. |
tessera.automaton1d(rule, width, generations, init) |
Elementary one-dimensional cellular automaton. |
tessera.reaction_diffusion(sz, steps, feed, kill, seed) |
Gray-Scott reaction-diffusion pattern. |
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
tessera.voronoi(sz, cells, seed) |
Voronoi cell-id map. |
[R, sites] = tessera.lloyd(sz, cells, iterations, seed) |
Voronoi cell-id map and final site coordinates after Lloyd relaxation. |
tessera.cave(sz, fill, steps, seed) |
Cellular-automaton cave, where 1 is wall and 0 is floor. |
tessera.maze(rows, cols, seed) |
Recursive-backtracker maze. |
tessera.chaos_game(n, kind, seed) |
IFS points for 'fern' or 'sierpinski'. |
tessera.lsystem(axiom, rules, iterations) |
Expand an L-system string. |
tessera.turtle(commands, angle, step) |
Convert turtle commands into polyline coordinates. |
[P, W, C] = tessera.turtle_render(...) |
Turtle coordinates with per-symbol step, width and color parameters. |
tessera.dla(sz, particles, seed, ...) |
Diffusion-limited aggregation with obstacles, multiple seeds, directional attraction and periodic borders. |
tessera.wang_tiles(sz, colors, seed) |
Wang tile ids with matching neighbor edges. Also accepts 'colors' and 'seed'. |
tessera.tile_wfc(sample, outsize, seed) |
Tiled-model synthesis from sample adjacency. |
[R, info, trace] = tessera.wfc(sample, outsize, N, seed) |
Overlapping-model wave function collapse with retry, contradiction and decision diagnostics. |
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
tessera.advect_curl(points, steps, ...) |
Advect normalized particle positions through curl noise. |
tessera.rgb_volume(volume, cmap) |
Convert a 3-D scalar volume to RGB. |
tessera.rgb_sequence(frames, cmap) |
Convert a 3-D scalar frame sequence to RGB frames. |
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
tessera.poisson_disk(width, height, radius, k, seed) |
Bridson Poisson-disk samples. |
tessera.halton(n, dims) |
Halton low-discrepancy sequence. |
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
tessera.colormap(name, n) |
Procedural colormaps: terrain, fire, ice, grayscale. |
tessera.rgb(field, cmap) |
Convert a scalar field to an RGB image. |
tessera.animate(kind, frames, ...) |
Animation helper with frames, size, palette, seed and GIF output options. Kinds include julia, mandelbrot_zoom, life, reaction, fbm3_slice, worley_edges, turtle, curl_particles, dla_growth, lloyd_relaxation, gabor_sweep, wavelet_sweep and wang_scroll. |
tessera.demo() |
Static generator gallery. |
Terrain field:
H = tessera.ridged(512, 7, 42);
imagesc(H); axis image off; colormap(tessera.colormap('terrain'))
Tileable 3-D fBm volume:
V = tessera.fbm3([128 128 32], 'octaves', 5, 'seed', 42, 'seamless', true);
imagesc(V(:, :, 1)); axis image off
Worley edge texture:
W = tessera.worley(256, 'cells', 12, 'feature', 'f2-f1', ...
'metric', 'chebyshev', 'seamless', true);
imagesc(W); axis image off; colormap(tessera.colormap('fire'))
L-system coordinates:
S = tessera.lsystem('F', {'F', 'F+F--F+F'}, 3);
P = tessera.turtle(S, 60, 1);
plot(P(:, 1), P(:, 2)); axis equal off
Animated examples:
tessera.animate('fbm3_slice', 96)
tessera.animate('worley_edges', 120)
tessera.animate('turtle', 180)
tessera.animate('dla_growth', 90)
tessera.animate('lloyd_relaxation', 80)
tessera.animate('gabor_sweep', 120)
tessera.animate('wavelet_sweep', 'frames', 120, 'size', 192, ...
'palette', 'ice', 'seed', 3, 'output', 'wavelet.gif')
tessera.animate('curl_particles', 'frames', 160, 'size', 180, 'seed', 9)
tessera.animate('wang_scroll', 120)
RGB output:
H = tessera.fbm(256, 'seed', 1);
RGB = tessera.rgb(H, 'terrain');
imshow(RGB)
test_run('tessera')
LGPL-3.0-or-later. Copyright (c) 2016-present Allan CORNET (Nelson).