Generators

Build textures, patterns, shapes, and values from scratch.

Generators make images out of nothing but settings: noise, gradients, shapes, patterns. They sit at the start of a chain and feed everything downstream. (A few also take an input: Scatter and Splatter Circular stamp an image you give them, and several accept numbers to drive their settings.)

Textures and patterns#

Node What it makes
Noise Perlin, simplex, voronoi, or white noise. Tune scale, octaves, persistence, seed. Wire Time into an offset to make it drift.
Gradient Linear, radial, or angular, between two colors.
Solid Color A flat fill. Backgrounds and color math.
Pattern Checkerboard, stripes, dots, or grid. Tiles seamlessly.

Shapes#

Node What it makes
SDF Shape 19 crisp shapes (circle, box, capsule, hexagon, heart, moon, and more), sharp at any size, with an optional colored edge ring and a Transparent BG toggle. Its Distance output drives clean Bevels and iso-line ornaments.
Scatter Stamps an image across the canvas at random positions, sizes, rotations, and opacities. Same seed, same layout.
Splatter Circular Stamps an image around a circle for rivets, beads, and filigree borders (mix up to four stamps), with separated jitter, per-stamp squash and tint, and tangent orientation. Wire a shape's Distance in to ring any silhouette (hexagon, heart) instead of a circle.

Utilities#

Helpers that drive and route the pipeline rather than make pictures.

Node What it does
Time The playback clock, in seconds. Wire it into anything to animate.
Math Arithmetic on two values: add, subtract, multiply, divide, sin, cos, and more.
Remap Rescale a value from one range to another.
Smooth Ease a changing value over time.
Switch Route one of several images through, by choice.

Press Play in the toolbar to start the clock so anything wired to Time comes alive.

Drawing with code#

Prefer to write it? GLSL, JavaScript, and Plot nodes render live from code. See Code Nodes.

Output size#

Most generators have W and H settings, or Auto to inherit the pipeline default. Work at low resolution while you dial things in.

Where to next#