Hello there,
After few days of hard work, I'm happy to say that a new filter 'Patterns / Pack shape' has appeared in the G'MIC plug-in for GIMP (requires 1.5.6.0+).
What it does is take a generic 'shape' (a color image with an alpha-channel) as an input, and eventually a mask, and try to generate a random mosaic consisting of repeated versions of the shape at different scales.
There are two different modes that can be used : either masked or non-masked mode.
Here is a quick description on how it works :

- First, load a simple shape (a small image with transparency), like this :



- Then, open the G'MIC plug-in, refresh your filters if you haven't done it yet, and go to 'Patterns / Pack shape' :



- Let 'Masking' parameter to 'No masking', set your rendering width and height, the number of different scale, etc... then click OK. You'll get this (note that this filter has an accurate progress bar, as it takes some time to compute) :



Now, let's add some masking. You just add a transparent bottom layer with a shape drawn on it. Note that in this case, the final rendering will have the same dimension as your mask image :



and call G'MIC again, but this time, select 'Masking = Mask as bottom layer', and 'Input Layers = All', then click 'OK'. Wait a little bit (more, as masking implies more constraints, and slow down the algorithm).
And this is what you get :



The shapes have been drawn only on the transparent area of the mask image.

Well that's it for this filter, I'm sure you will find a lot of nice uses of it
Just post your creative results here if you have some !

Next to come, a 'Shapism' filter, close to the current 'Circlism' filter but with more shapes.
Let's back to work

Extremely cool David. Now to get them packing even closer. lol

What fun. Great way to make seamless patterns.

Lot's of fun to be had with this one!

Looks really cool ! Thanks for testing

Why does mine only create one size shape?



My settings

Rod, I suspect your input image is too large, so probably the only shapes G'MIC is able to put on your resulting image is the latest scale (the smallest one).
You should try to reduce the size of your input shape, so that even at the first scale (the original one), your object can be drawn in the rendering.

Yes you are correct. The input image was too large.
I tried a 70x70 with 1000x1000 output with the same settings and got this.


Then i couldn't resist a mathmap run on it.

Awesome!

Question to David. Is there a way to add a slider to control the squeeze (i.e. packing) of the objects? Would like such a feature for the shapeism preset too.

This filter is very interesting.

Awesome stuff. It amazes me what you guys come up with, and your hard work is greatly appreciated.

O: love the fish picture! really cute.
samj: that's a real "wow!" result.
rod: so cool with the mathmap one!
odinbc: lovely purple picture you got.
lylejk: you're a real wizard!!! how did you get them so tightly packed and what did the mask(s) look like?

seems i'm the only one who can't get anything much out of this filter. the filter only seems to run okay if i use the default settings - every time i try the masking option or move the sliders around for the no masking option i get this:

am i doing something wrong here?

AnMal

*****

Information about the filter -fitshape (G'MIC) :
http://www.flickr.com/groups/gmic/discu ... 052242949/

The beta 64-bit version G'MIC Windows is updated (20130610) : http://www.aljacom.com/~gmic/gmic-beta_ ... ts_win.zip

Anmal, if you select the 'masking' option, you need to add a bottom layer with your mask on it, and you need also to select 'Input Layers' -> 'All'.
Maybe I need to write an error message that is more clear in that case.

Thanks Samj.

haha, O, I think many students do think of being under attack from the homework!

Multiple passes of Pack Shape, but David did an excellent job with enforcing mask rules so made the layering pretty much child's play. Of course I blended textures based on the original refererence. lol

Click the image for the higher rez result at Flickr.

ref: http://www.fontplay.com/freephotos/fift ... 206-05.jpg