25 comments

  • wky 22 hours ago
    This reminded me of such good memories of playing with http://weavesilk.com/. Nice to see someone with a similar concept.
    • andai 22 hours ago
      Woah. The things we can do nowadays!
  • arist0tl3 1 day ago
    The actual drawing experience is really satisfying. A couple usability tweaks I did just fiddling in the DOM: - Put the output and inputs side by side - Put the "actions", export, clear, etc. pinned to the bottom - The overall goal being zero scrolling

    After that it was quite fun and I enjoyed the options you gave for things like brush size, metallics, gradients, etc. Nice!

  • GavinMcG 1 day ago
    When I scroll down to select a different color for my next stroke, the canvas often resets.

    Edit: or rather undoes the last stroke (which looks like resetting when it goes from 1 to 0).

    • tobr 1 day ago
      Same for me, while the actual clear button, ironically, does not work reliably.
  • nayuki 21 hours ago
    I experimented with this concept over a decade ago: https://www.nayuki.io/page/symmetry-sketcher-javascript

    I was probably inspired by mouse-painting tools in Corel Photo-Paint (like Adobe Photoshop) that have an "orbits" feature. https://product.corel.com/help/PHOTO-PAINT/540111130/Main/EN...

  • fractorial 23 hours ago
    As a programmer, maths researcher, and painter, there’s certainly something satisfying (to me) when an artistically symmetrical piece observes no mathematical symmetry: The very asymmetry in the language used to describe it is, in and of itself, beautiful.
    • gilleain 21 hours ago
      Not sure what you mean by "an artistically symmetrical piece observes no mathematical symmetry" - as in, the underlying structure has a (set of) symmetries but the 'decoration' on top is asymmetric?
      • Caracas288 20 hours ago
        Maybe they are talking about physical mandalas?
  • catoc 1 day ago
    Cool!

    I made a similar thing for my kids (they wanted something similar to the kaleidoscopic drawing you can do in some ‘Monument Valley’ levels

    https://mirror-it.staticdomains.app/index.html

    • detritus 21 hours ago
      I bookmarked OP's link for specifically for my kid, but I think she'll much prefer your version, simpler and clearer as it is - thank you so much!
    • andai 22 hours ago
      Very cool. I like how it erases the oldest bit as you go along.
    • Wowfunhappy 1 day ago
      I love this!!
    • wuhhh 20 hours ago
      [dead]
  • andybak 1 day ago
    Ha! I added a similar feature to Open Brush: https://docs.openbrush.app/user-guide/multimirror

    And learned a bit about group theory in the process... :-/

    ( https://github.com/IxxyXR/unity-symmetry )

  • larodi 1 day ago
    Hm... is this technically a mandala? I mean - does it suffice for something to have radial symmetry to be called a mandala?
    • pickleglitch 23 hours ago
      Technically, no. Colloquially, maybe.
  • intrasight 21 hours ago
    Feature request it would be fun to draw snowflakes but to do that there'd have to be another setting to constrain things you draw to be straight lines at just the angles that ice crystals would allow.
  • dmd 16 hours ago
    Love this. I had something almost identical on my Commodore 64 40 years ago that you could use with the joystick or KoalaPad.
  • smusamashah 22 hours ago
    The control panel should have been on the side instead of below the image. I scroll to bottom, mandalla disappears on top in the screen, I click generate, then I scroll back up, repeat.
  • kazinator 19 hours ago
    I'm like:

    Neat! I will show this to my small kids.

    Wait, nope; they already know how to make mandala coasters offline with scissors and paper.

  • VVIQ2 15 hours ago
    Nice! Kinda reminds me this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirograph
  • timbaiguzhinov 23 hours ago
    Even with the perfect math, i made it ugly, lol. But it got me hypnotized, spent 10 minutes in a blink of an eye.
  • albinn 5 days ago
    Cool! I got a weird feeling when playing with it, it's just something very satisfying in seeing it be completed
  • thraxil 1 day ago
    "Mirror" mode was my favorite feature on the Koala Pad app back in the 1980s.
  • fiskeben 23 hours ago
    I spent a lot of time playing with a similar tool in Deluxe Paint as a kid.
  • aghilmort 21 hours ago
    lots of fun! like etch-a-sketch, lite-brite, spirograph, paint, etc. on steroids!!
  • Gualdrapo 1 day ago
    fwiw Krita has a similar setting in its brush tool - you draw a stroke and said brush stroke is mirrored by a given x axis or a given y axis (or both)
  • aaroninsf 20 hours ago
    Suggestion OP if you would like one:

    Support click-and-spin with momentum: I clicked outside the mandala and quick-dragged horizontally, hoping this would spin the mandala.

    You could support zero-friction and momentum, slowly stopping.

    In either this unlocks a dramatically new aesthetic: clicking on the rotating surface draws splines. The mapping of gesture-to-line (hence mandala elements) changes completely.

    There are some complications, intuitively one might expect "pottery wheel mode" where symmetry is not enabled... I think that would be "unlearned" however.

  • abhishxk1 1 day ago
    Bro this is hypnotic lol i spent 15 mins on this without even realising
  • OttoZ05 23 hours ago
    we clearly need the mobile app
    • Jaxan 20 hours ago
      I looked in the AppStore for “symmetry draw”, and there are at least 10 such apps.
  • aussieguy1234 1 day ago
    Now we just need the mobile app
  • wuhhh 20 hours ago
    [dead]
  • reake 22 hours ago
    [dead]