8 ms·

Trianglify.io – Low Poly Pattern Generator

274 points by sysadm1n 4y ago

mywacaday 4y ago
I found that really visually pleasing, will be using it to make a few screen savers. Great job!
artemonster 4y ago
Wait, no subscription and credit card required?
- cedilla 4y ago
  Not even an Enterprise variant for unlocking LDAP/SSO integration.
- crisbal_ 4y ago
  Well, apparently there is. Just press export and you will find it costs 8$.
  - cedilla 4y ago
    I didn't even notice, as you can just right-click and download. It's also not mentioned in the FAQ, which just states that "You own the copyright to any patterns produced using this tool, just like you'd own the copyright to a design you made using Photoshop or Illustrator." Soo... a hybrid of donation button and tax on people who don't know about right-click → save image?
    - qrohlf 4y ago
      Basically, yes! Since the fundamental functionality is powered by my (free) open-source library, trianglify.io is a time-saving tool for those who want a quick GUI instead of having to download and learn the npm library. It's part of a series of experiments that I've run on monetizing open source, which you can read about in the article I wrote a while back here: https://medium.com/@qrohlf/i-sell-triangles-on-the-internet-113bb8590613 https://medium.com/@qrohlf/i-sell-triangles-on-the-internet-... That said, right-click > save as image is supposed to be disabled on that particular DOM element, but I'm guessing you probably have an extension or user-script that re-enables it. Which is fine, you're probably not the target audience for this! Trianglify.io is mostly used by designers working on professional projects for whom $8 to save 20-30min of tedious work in Illustrator is a very good value proposition.
      - cedilla 4y ago
        Well, I know what my designer colleagues pay for stock backgrounds, so I agree that it's more than fair. Wouldn't even raise an eyebrow. You're right, I do have an extension against common annoyances. Totally forgot about it since I usually screenshot anyways.
      - LukeShu 4y ago
        > That said, right-click > save as image is supposed to be disabled on that particular DOM element, but I'm guessing you probably have an extension or user-script that re-enables it. FYI, even without an extension, you can bypass it being disabled by holding down the shift key while right-clicking (at least in Firefox).
      - dahart 4y ago
        > right-click > save as image is supposed to be disabled on that particular DOM element Having done some of my own monetizing experiments, I was surprised by how often people don’t make any attempts to circumvent what is written on the site. Text appeared to be much stronger than efforts to prevent free service. Still, it’s kinda funny to me if this works well enough to make any sales. It’s not possible to prevent download of images you serve, there are several ways to save them in all the major browsers without any plugins. Are you serving the full size image?Intentionally?
  - Retr0id 4y ago
    The Firefox "Allow Right-Click" addon remedies this situation: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/re-enable-right-click/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/re-enable-rig...
    - edg-l 4y ago
      you don't need an extension, just press shift and right click
      - lf-non 4y ago
        And if you want an svg, you can trace the bitmap with inkscape.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mrstone 4y ago
Looks nice, but $8 for a PNG? Come on.
- john-tells-all 4y ago
  Paying for things can be a personal connection. I adore artists work, and occasionally buy things so they can be connected to me in addition to pay rent and so forth. So it's money for _connection_ vs paying for an individual _product_.
- yellow_lead 4y ago
  The code is open source here so im not sure why the export costs $ https://github.com/qrohlf/trianglify https://github.com/qrohlf/trianglify
  - monsieurbanana 4y ago
    Hn: Open source devs, monetize your work while keeping it open and free! OP: does that Hn: no not like that
    - duxup 4y ago
      IMO the price gets the attention.
    - mrstone 4y ago
      If it was like, $1 or something, I would be willing to buy it. $8 is entirely too much.
      - cedilla 4y ago
        It's less than a stock background costs, and less than the work would cost to recreate it yourself.
        squeaky-clean 4y ago
        Googling "polygon background generator" will get you a dozen free or ad-supported ones.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
qrohlf 4y ago
Author here - interesting to see this pop up on HN again! Since there are a lot of questions in the comments that might be answered by prior writing/discussions, here are a couple relevant links: 0. Trianglify.io is a GUI for my GPL-licensed node library of the same name, which is available for use in OSS projects for free: https://qrohlf.com/trianglify/ https://qrohlf.com/trianglify/ 1. Trianglify (the library) first became popular because of an HN post eight years ago. Discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7578002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7578002 2. I've written a short Medium article on why Trianglify.io exists and how I arrived at the current freemium/micropayments model for monetizing it: https://medium.com/@qrohlf/i-sell-triangles-on-the-internet-113bb8590613 https://medium.com/@qrohlf/i-sell-triangles-on-the-internet-...
- chrismorgan 4y ago
  > micropayments I don’t think it’s reasonable to call $8 micropayments. Now if you were selling the individual triangles pro rata…
  - jasonm23 4y ago
    The triangles individually can cost up to $0.40... now that's value, and sarcasm.
- martin_a 4y ago
  How much does it pay you monthly, if I may ask?
  - textninja 4y ago
    I am dying to know the answer to this. I can’t get over the fact people are paying $8 for downloads of randomized triangles, but then again NFTs are a thing so I shouldn’t be too surprised.
    - martin_a 4y ago
      Honestly, I'd be totally cool if it pays some bills because it fixes somebodies problem. I just wonder if projects this small can really be monetized.
qrohlf 4y ago
One thing that folks may find interesting about this project on a technical level is that it's fully stateless including the backend that's responsible for interacting with Stripe Checkout, processing payments, and sending emails with receipts and links to re-download patterns. The thing that makes that possible is that I'm using a seedable PRNG for the pattern generation and have a custom serialization format for all of the possible pattern parameters. This means that any pattern can be represented by a single short string like `w:1440!h:900!x:random!v:0.63!c:0.06!s:9gjk5s!f:sp!i:0.30` and reproduced with 100% accuracy. That means instead of a database, I can just store the entire purchased pattern directly within the Stripe transaction within the `client_id` field using this compressed representation. Then it's just a matter of reading it back from the Stripe API when I get the "purchase completed" webhooks in order to build the correct attachments and send the customer their assets via email. This keeps my own service totally stateless & database-free, and also has the very nice property of allowing me to quickly and easily access the pattern by copy-pasting the client-id from the Stripe dashboard if I ever need to grab it for customer service reasons!
- mr-karan 4y ago
  Quite a cool approach. Although only one downside I see here is that you're just relying on Stripe to let you access order history? What if they don't let you access this data via APIs for data older than a certain time period? Or is that not much of a concern here?
- josiahpeters 4y ago
  I know that people are beating you up over the price, but this is great. 1. Someone could generate the same asset for themselves using your open source library. Which is great for someone who has time over budget. 2. You are providing value in your packaging of that time savings. 3. You created a very cheap way to offer this using server less and stateless. Props to you for making something that is financially sustainable for a long time. Number 3 is the most interesting of the above. That’s no easy feat and I applaud you for it.
- savolai 4y ago
  It says you can use the library on your website if the website is open source. When does a WordPress website qualify as open source, or not? Or is the talk about gplv3 just trying to scare people because it's unclear to them what this requirement actually means? Not criticizing your business model, just curious. Thanks for the tool, liked the aesthetics.
monkeydust 4y ago
Nice, would like to see this type of interface for other generative art algos.
swiftcoder 4y ago
It's pretty, but there is an odd singularity when you scrub between zero and non-zero variance. Is zero variance handled as a special-case for some reason?
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  zero variance is all copies of the same triangle tessellated together. By definition a non-zero variance has to introduce change in at least 1 triangle and in doing so has to recalculate all connected triangles. It's hard to imagine how there couldn't be a strange blip when transitioning from zero to non-zero.
morphicpro 4y ago
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLCanvasElement/toDataURL https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLCanvasE...
Waterluvian 4y ago
About 20 years ago when I got started with GIS in 9th grade, my geography teacher told me about Color Brewer, this website to help pick colour palettes for maps. I noticed that the last name of one author was “Brewer.” Your app has “colour brewer” as a label. Is this a coincidence? Did Brewer coin the name all those years ago? Or does “colour brewer” predate or exist separately from that website, such as, “brewing up some colours” or something?
rcarmo 4y ago
I used this to generate some two dozen wallpapers of various color schemes that were on my desktops for _years_ (I still use them on iPhone and iPad). Loved it, and also loved the result since they were varied and interesting to look at without being distracting. I now have a set of scripts that downloads the Bing wallpaper of the day for Mac and Linux, and I like those as well, but sometimes miss the gradients and ambiance these generated since (in Windows at least) extrapolating the dominant color in those photos for desktop theme highlights mostly results in… brown.
KMnO4 4y ago
> Can I use the Trianglify javascript library on my website? > Yes, as long as your website is open-source and complies with the terms of the GNU General Public License v3. If you're interested in purchasing a commercial license for the Trianglify javascript library, please get in touch. Bleh. This along with the $8 export fee makes me really tempted to spend the 2 hours building out a similar library and webpage and release it as MIT.
daxuak 4y ago
Why does strip ask for canvas access in the demo? How is that related?
Nekorosu 4y ago
I felt a bit of irritation regarding the price at first, but after giving it a second thought and understanding it was based on OS lib, got okay with it. It sounds like a bold statement: "Learn to program or pay." Like it!
swayvil 4y ago
Nice. Passably pretty and tasteful. This could be useful. Do you have a javascript random-generator version that I can plug into my page?
valtism 4y ago
You can get this for free, along with a bunch of other cool designs on https://coolbackgrounds.io/ https://coolbackgrounds.io/
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mavu 4y ago
This is very pretty!
ruined 4y ago
>Can't be larger than 3840 why
wcedmisten 4y ago
Very cool! I recently created a similar project where you can upload an image to be converted into low-poly art! https://wcedmisten.fyi/project/lowPoly/ https://wcedmisten.fyi/project/lowPoly/
aramachandran7 4y ago
Thanks for putting downloads behind a paywall.
ricopags 4y ago
This is cool and I love the aesthetics. I probably won't pay $8 but I hope lots of people do. In terms of additional feature requests, one that springs instantly to mind is a voronoi generator[0,1]. [0]https://georgefrancis.dev/writing/crafting-organic-patterns-with-voronoi-tessellations/ https://georgefrancis.dev/writing/crafting-organic-patterns-... [1]https://github.com/WebSVG/voronoi https://github.com/WebSVG/voronoi
jasonm23 4y ago
$8 ... lol
geekprogrammer 4y ago

274 points by sysadm1n 4y ago

mywacaday 4y ago

I found that really visually pleasing, will be using it to make a few screen savers. Great job!

artemonster 4y ago

Wait, no subscription and credit card required?

cedilla 4y ago
Not even an Enterprise variant for unlocking LDAP/SSO integration.
crisbal_ 4y ago
Well, apparently there is. Just press export and you will find it costs 8$.
- cedilla 4y ago
  I didn't even notice, as you can just right-click and download. It's also not mentioned in the FAQ, which just states that "You own the copyright to any patterns produced using this tool, just like you'd own the copyright to a design you made using Photoshop or Illustrator." Soo... a hybrid of donation button and tax on people who don't know about right-click → save image?
  - qrohlf 4y ago
    Basically, yes! Since the fundamental functionality is powered by my (free) open-source library, trianglify.io is a time-saving tool for those who want a quick GUI instead of having to download and learn the npm library. It's part of a series of experiments that I've run on monetizing open source, which you can read about in the article I wrote a while back here: https://medium.com/@qrohlf/i-sell-triangles-on-the-internet-113bb8590613 https://medium.com/@qrohlf/i-sell-triangles-on-the-internet-... That said, right-click > save as image is supposed to be disabled on that particular DOM element, but I'm guessing you probably have an extension or user-script that re-enables it. Which is fine, you're probably not the target audience for this! Trianglify.io is mostly used by designers working on professional projects for whom $8 to save 20-30min of tedious work in Illustrator is a very good value proposition.
    - cedilla 4y ago
      Well, I know what my designer colleagues pay for stock backgrounds, so I agree that it's more than fair. Wouldn't even raise an eyebrow. You're right, I do have an extension against common annoyances. Totally forgot about it since I usually screenshot anyways.
    - LukeShu 4y ago
      > That said, right-click > save as image is supposed to be disabled on that particular DOM element, but I'm guessing you probably have an extension or user-script that re-enables it. FYI, even without an extension, you can bypass it being disabled by holding down the shift key while right-clicking (at least in Firefox).
    - dahart 4y ago
      > right-click > save as image is supposed to be disabled on that particular DOM element Having done some of my own monetizing experiments, I was surprised by how often people don’t make any attempts to circumvent what is written on the site. Text appeared to be much stronger than efforts to prevent free service. Still, it’s kinda funny to me if this works well enough to make any sales. It’s not possible to prevent download of images you serve, there are several ways to save them in all the major browsers without any plugins. Are you serving the full size image?Intentionally?
- Retr0id 4y ago
  The Firefox "Allow Right-Click" addon remedies this situation: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/re-enable-right-click/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/re-enable-rig...
  - edg-l 4y ago
    you don't need an extension, just press shift and right click
    - lf-non 4y ago
      And if you want an svg, you can trace the bitmap with inkscape.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mrstone 4y ago

Looks nice, but $8 for a PNG? Come on.

john-tells-all 4y ago
Paying for things can be a personal connection. I adore artists work, and occasionally buy things so they can be connected to me in addition to pay rent and so forth. So it's money for _connection_ vs paying for an individual _product_.
yellow_lead 4y ago
The code is open source here so im not sure why the export costs $ https://github.com/qrohlf/trianglify https://github.com/qrohlf/trianglify
- monsieurbanana 4y ago
  Hn: Open source devs, monetize your work while keeping it open and free! OP: does that Hn: no not like that
  - duxup 4y ago
    IMO the price gets the attention.
  - mrstone 4y ago
    If it was like, $1 or something, I would be willing to buy it. $8 is entirely too much.
    - cedilla 4y ago
      It's less than a stock background costs, and less than the work would cost to recreate it yourself.
      - squeaky-clean 4y ago
        Googling "polygon background generator" will get you a dozen free or ad-supported ones.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

qrohlf 4y ago

Author here - interesting to see this pop up on HN again! Since there are a lot of questions in the comments that might be answered by prior writing/discussions, here are a couple relevant links: 0. Trianglify.io is a GUI for my GPL-licensed node library of the same name, which is available for use in OSS projects for free: https://qrohlf.com/trianglify/ https://qrohlf.com/trianglify/ 1. Trianglify (the library) first became popular because of an HN post eight years ago. Discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7578002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7578002 2. I've written a short Medium article on why Trianglify.io exists and how I arrived at the current freemium/micropayments model for monetizing it: https://medium.com/@qrohlf/i-sell-triangles-on-the-internet-113bb8590613 https://medium.com/@qrohlf/i-sell-triangles-on-the-internet-...

chrismorgan 4y ago
> micropayments I don’t think it’s reasonable to call $8 micropayments. Now if you were selling the individual triangles pro rata…
- jasonm23 4y ago
  The triangles individually can cost up to $0.40... now that's value, and sarcasm.
martin_a 4y ago
How much does it pay you monthly, if I may ask?
- textninja 4y ago
  I am dying to know the answer to this. I can’t get over the fact people are paying $8 for downloads of randomized triangles, but then again NFTs are a thing so I shouldn’t be too surprised.
  - martin_a 4y ago
    Honestly, I'd be totally cool if it pays some bills because it fixes somebodies problem. I just wonder if projects this small can really be monetized.

qrohlf 4y ago

One thing that folks may find interesting about this project on a technical level is that it's fully stateless including the backend that's responsible for interacting with Stripe Checkout, processing payments, and sending emails with receipts and links to re-download patterns. The thing that makes that possible is that I'm using a seedable PRNG for the pattern generation and have a custom serialization format for all of the possible pattern parameters. This means that any pattern can be represented by a single short string like `w:1440!h:900!x:random!v:0.63!c:0.06!s:9gjk5s!f:sp!i:0.30` and reproduced with 100% accuracy. That means instead of a database, I can just store the entire purchased pattern directly within the Stripe transaction within the `client_id` field using this compressed representation. Then it's just a matter of reading it back from the Stripe API when I get the "purchase completed" webhooks in order to build the correct attachments and send the customer their assets via email. This keeps my own service totally stateless & database-free, and also has the very nice property of allowing me to quickly and easily access the pattern by copy-pasting the client-id from the Stripe dashboard if I ever need to grab it for customer service reasons!

mr-karan 4y ago
Quite a cool approach. Although only one downside I see here is that you're just relying on Stripe to let you access order history? What if they don't let you access this data via APIs for data older than a certain time period? Or is that not much of a concern here?
josiahpeters 4y ago
I know that people are beating you up over the price, but this is great. 1. Someone could generate the same asset for themselves using your open source library. Which is great for someone who has time over budget. 2. You are providing value in your packaging of that time savings. 3. You created a very cheap way to offer this using server less and stateless. Props to you for making something that is financially sustainable for a long time. Number 3 is the most interesting of the above. That’s no easy feat and I applaud you for it.
savolai 4y ago
It says you can use the library on your website if the website is open source. When does a WordPress website qualify as open source, or not? Or is the talk about gplv3 just trying to scare people because it's unclear to them what this requirement actually means? Not criticizing your business model, just curious. Thanks for the tool, liked the aesthetics.

monkeydust 4y ago

Nice, would like to see this type of interface for other generative art algos.

swiftcoder 4y ago

It's pretty, but there is an odd singularity when you scrub between zero and non-zero variance. Is zero variance handled as a special-case for some reason?

idiotsecant 4y ago
zero variance is all copies of the same triangle tessellated together. By definition a non-zero variance has to introduce change in at least 1 triangle and in doing so has to recalculate all connected triangles. It's hard to imagine how there couldn't be a strange blip when transitioning from zero to non-zero.

morphicpro 4y ago

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLCanvasElement/toDataURL https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLCanvasE...

Waterluvian 4y ago

About 20 years ago when I got started with GIS in 9th grade, my geography teacher told me about Color Brewer, this website to help pick colour palettes for maps. I noticed that the last name of one author was “Brewer.” Your app has “colour brewer” as a label. Is this a coincidence? Did Brewer coin the name all those years ago? Or does “colour brewer” predate or exist separately from that website, such as, “brewing up some colours” or something?

rcarmo 4y ago

I used this to generate some two dozen wallpapers of various color schemes that were on my desktops for _years_ (I still use them on iPhone and iPad). Loved it, and also loved the result since they were varied and interesting to look at without being distracting. I now have a set of scripts that downloads the Bing wallpaper of the day for Mac and Linux, and I like those as well, but sometimes miss the gradients and ambiance these generated since (in Windows at least) extrapolating the dominant color in those photos for desktop theme highlights mostly results in… brown.

KMnO4 4y ago

> Can I use the Trianglify javascript library on my website? > Yes, as long as your website is open-source and complies with the terms of the GNU General Public License v3. If you're interested in purchasing a commercial license for the Trianglify javascript library, please get in touch. Bleh. This along with the $8 export fee makes me really tempted to spend the 2 hours building out a similar library and webpage and release it as MIT.

daxuak 4y ago

Why does strip ask for canvas access in the demo? How is that related?

Nekorosu 4y ago

I felt a bit of irritation regarding the price at first, but after giving it a second thought and understanding it was based on OS lib, got okay with it. It sounds like a bold statement: "Learn to program or pay." Like it!

swayvil 4y ago

Nice. Passably pretty and tasteful. This could be useful. Do you have a javascript random-generator version that I can plug into my page?

valtism 4y ago

You can get this for free, along with a bunch of other cool designs on https://coolbackgrounds.io/ https://coolbackgrounds.io/

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mavu 4y ago

This is very pretty!

ruined 4y ago

>Can't be larger than 3840 why

wcedmisten 4y ago

Very cool! I recently created a similar project where you can upload an image to be converted into low-poly art! https://wcedmisten.fyi/project/lowPoly/ https://wcedmisten.fyi/project/lowPoly/

aramachandran7 4y ago

Thanks for putting downloads behind a paywall.

ricopags 4y ago

This is cool and I love the aesthetics. I probably won't pay $8 but I hope lots of people do. In terms of additional feature requests, one that springs instantly to mind is a voronoi generator[0,1]. [0]https://georgefrancis.dev/writing/crafting-organic-patterns-with-voronoi-tessellations/ https://georgefrancis.dev/writing/crafting-organic-patterns-... [1]https://github.com/WebSVG/voronoi https://github.com/WebSVG/voronoi

jasonm23 4y ago

$8 ... lol

geekprogrammer 4y ago