MandalaCreator

A mandala drawn one line at a time in Processing, where the figure emerges from two parameters slowly drifting apart.

The sketch rotates by 2 * PI / pow(2, order) each step, with order = 4, so sixteen copies of every stroke land around the circle. Two parameters, a and b, control the shape. They start close together at 2.5 and 2.4, and b decrements by 0.01 every frame, so the ratio between them drifts and the figure opens out rather than closing on itself.

That drift is the whole design. A fixed ratio gives one static rosette. A moving one gives the sequence above, and the frames in mandala/GifPhotos/ are one run sampled every twenty frames.

Colour cycles through a five-colour palette as the iteration counter advances.

File
mandala/mandala.pde	The 2D sketch.
mandala/mandala3D.pde	The same construction in three dimensions, commented line by line.

Run

1. Install Processing.
2. Open mandala/mandala.pde.
3. Press run.

Canvas is 1400 by 1400. Change order for a different number of symmetries and incrVal for how fast the figure opens.