Monovektor

THREE’S A CHARM

Håkan @ Monovektor — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 06:07:17 +0000

During a late night web crawling session I found out that someone have reverse engineered (very much like I did) the Afternow Script. This was, as I’ve said before, the first attempt of a script that I ever made. It is also the one script I’ve done that have generated the most requests. Since Scriptographer is dead now I figure it couldn’t harm to link to it now, hope you don’t mind Jürg. The code is here and below are images of the three variations.

First out is the original Afternow.
Followed by my own version.
And lastly the one I found tonight.

MISSION STATEMENT

Håkan @ Monovektor — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 09:05:11 +0000

This post marks the start of a new project, which came about heavily influenced by the image below, Mokafolio‘s project Weird Faces Study, made with PaperJS.
Long before this I had been wanting to make something modular and maybe even something that could generate some sort of seed value so that re-creating any previous attempts would be easy. Not sure whether this project qualifies as proceduraly generated as there is a very small amount of randomness in it. Instead it will rely heavily on the relationships between different points – or key locations whose values are determined by the input of the user.
The plan is to make a script that, given these values, will draw different faces (I told you it was heavily influenced), although with more control of the final output. The number of parameters will – if all goes according to what I plan – be quite high, probably at least twenty which will generate a rather long seed value.
In order for the seed value to be reasonably manageable I will use the LZW-compression algorithm hopefully reducing the seed to at least 75% of the original size. Thankfully, I’ve found a javascript implementation that will help a lot as I’m not that well versed in how it really works.

So, it all boils down to these checkpoints:
- Figure out what paramaters will be needed.
- How do the parameters relate to each other.
- Draw faces using these parameters.
- Create the GUI.
- Make seed values work.

AI SUDOKU GENERATOR

Håkan @ Monovektor — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 19:04:46 +0000

As Gramham van de Ruit tweeted about a Sudoku Generator for InDesign I had to look up the possibilities of making such a tool for Scriptographer. I’ve had this idea before but I’ve never put any effort into it. Not surprisingly, it is a fairly complex matter. Fortunately, a friendly soul, named David J. Rager, had posted the source code of his online javascript Sudoku Generator (+solver) on his blog. Being the opportunist that I am I quickly “borrowed” (well, he said it was free to use) his code and from that it was an oh-so-easy task to just wrap some Sg code around it for use in Illustrator!

The script generates puzzles and renders them in full vector. Everything; the frame, hints and a non-visible solution, are included inside a group object. Find it here.

dVIZ: DISTRIBUTE ITEMS

Håkan @ Monovektor — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:32:37 +0000

I’ve made yet another script to my dViz Tool Kit. Go here for the full brief… I’ve also added a couple of pages devoted to all the scripts available in the package. Just navigate to the downloads section or click here.

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dVIZ: UPDATES AND ADDITIONS

Håkan @ Monovektor — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 18:53:46 +0000

I have made a few revisions to some scripts as well as an addition of a new one in the dViz package from my last post. The Analog Clock, Circular Bar Graph & Stacks scripts have had some very minor changes that won’t be particular noticeable.

The Hyperbolic Line Converter has gotten a name change to Hyperbolic Lines as it is from now on possible to make new lines by entering degree values. There is also a new option to choose what side of the disk the lines will be drawn.

The new addition to the tools is the Measures script. Measures is useful to create rulers, gauges, scales etc. If a path is selected when pressing the ‘Make Ruler’-button the script will use that path as the spine/baseline of the ruler, otherwise it will create an ordinary straight ruler of entered length. The ‘Length’-option works differently when using percent as unit. The drawn ruler will ALWAYS be 100pt long and the ‘Length’-value is instead used to tell the script how high the scales max value is.

dVIZ: TOOL PACKAGE FOR FREE

Håkan @ Monovektor — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 00:23:05 +0000

I have thrown together a collection of small scripts that could save some time when visualizing data. I hope they can be helpful as, for most of them, there are no equivalent functions inherent in Illustrator – well, as far as I know. If you find these tools helpful; or have any suggestions of improvement; or ideas for other tools; or just about anything else – I’d appreciate comments.
I have a few other useful scripts that I intend to add to this package in the future, but in the meantime here is a quick run-down on what the scripts so. Really the best thing to do is to try them out and play around.

The package – as of 2012/12/29 – contains these scripts:

- Analog Clock
- Circular Bar Graph
- Hyperbolic Line
- Measures
- Polar Grid
- Polar Area / Pie Graph
- Radiating Bars Graph
- Stacks

Download dViz Tools here.

ANALOG CLOCK – v1.01
Make analog clocks that display either the current time or time set by the user. Very simple but may come in handy some time.

CIRCULAR BAR GRAPH – v1.01
A bar graph that bends like a circle. Each bar can be offset from the base as well. The user may set the amount of degrees the bars will turn, from 45°-360°. Another nice feature is the possibility to have variable max values to each bar. For instance: a bar value of 1 with a max value of 2 will look exactly the same as a bar value of 55 with max at 110.

HYPERBOLIC LINE – v1.1
Draw a circle and make sure it is selected before running the script. You can then either; draw lines on the perimeter of the circle, select them and press the ‘Convert Selected Paths’-button, or; enter degree values and press the ‘Make Line From Angles’-button, to produce the hyperbolic lines. With the ‘Draw Side’-list you can choose to draw the lines on the inside or outside of the disk.

MEASURES – v1.0
Measures is useful to create rulers, gauges, scales etc. If a path is selected when pressing the ‘Make Ruler’-button the script will use that path as the spine/baseline of the ruler, otherwise it will create an ordinary straight ruler of entered length. The ‘Length’-option works differently when using percent as unit. The drawn ruler will ALWAYS be 100pt long and the ‘Length’-value is instead used to tell the script how high the scales max value is.

POLAR GRID – v1.0
It has always bothered me that the AI Polar Grid Tool just makes lines. I want each cell to be an own object. This tool does that. Plus, it also supports variable number of sub-divisions per ring. The sourcecode of the main function is located here.

POLAR AREA / PIE GRAPH – v1.0
Pie Charts can be made in AI. In many ways far superior than my take but my version does however offer the possibility to make polar area diagrams as well.

RADIATING BARS GRAPH – v1.0
This graph, as the name so aptly suggests, radiates its bars from a center point. If, using the ‘Bars Touching’ option, the graph turns into a variant of a polar area diagram.

STACKS – v1.01
Stacks is a script to quickly fill an amount of columns and rows with a designated key object.

DREDDFUL RASTER

Håkan @ Monovektor — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 20:59:40 +0000

Yet another raster. This time I made it into pie charts. Each pie chart displays its sub-divided areas amount of red, green and blue in relation to each other. White will therefore be made up of three equal parts of maximum red, green and blue. See for yourself.

I also made a polar area diagram raster. As the sectors will grow, or shrink, depending on the amount of color there will be more background, thus yielding a slightly darker image compared to the pie chart raster.

A BLAST FROM THE PAST

Håkan @ Monovektor — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 20:30:12 +0000

Some nice looking retro nostalgia. I’ve forgotten where I found them. Just thought I’d post them cause they’re nice to look at.

>> NEW PAGE, FRONT PAGE, JIMMY PAGE

Håkan @ Monovektor — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 23:04:38 +0000

It has been a loooong while since my last post. The past couple of months I have been swamped as a result of a very life changing event so my time in front of the screen has indeed shrunk to almost no time at all. With so little time to spare I’ll cut to the [more…]

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SCRIPT: CROSS-HATCH RASTER

Håkan @ Monovektor — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 00:56:08 +0000

As I was fiddling around with a bunch of raster effects (covered in this post) I stumbled upon a nice look that I felt I had to cultivate. I wrote and posted the script at the Scriptographer homepage. I think it made quite the nice cross-hatch pattern by dividing the stroke width by three.

When dividing the stroke width with a smaller number, a “thicker” pattern emerged.

Going below 1, another surprising effect happened…