Seamless pattern techniques

Every tile on tilejar is drawn by one of 64 techniques, or cropped from a CC0 photograph. Pick one to see its tiles and how it is made.

waves and lattices

• sine lattice 6 tiles a soft, undulating grid of light and shade, like ripples crossing on calm water.
• sine product 6 tiles crisp checkerboard-like cells with pinched nodes where two waves cross.
• xor 4 tiles nested squares and stepped, self-similar blocks born from bitwise math. Retro, digital, crisp.
• modular multiplication 1 tile moiré-like fringes and rhythmic line bands from simple integer math.
• periodic tile 3 tiles smooth, rounded geometric cells like pressed tin, tiles or embossed paper.
• gyroid 8 tiles interlocking, maze-like ribbons sliced from a minimal surface found in butterfly wings.
• ornament 5 tiles classic decorative repeats — medallions, rosettes and scrollwork — built procedurally.
• Chladni 9 tiles sand-on-a-vibrating-plate figures — symmetric lines where the plate stays still.
• expression tree 4 tiles unpredictable abstract art from random math formulas — swirls, bands, glitches.

polar

• rings 7 tiles concentric circles and target-like bands with rhythmic, varying spacing.
• rays 3 tiles radial spokes and sunburst wedges in alternating bands, from retro sunbursts to starbursts.
• spiral 5 tiles intertwined spiral arms, from evenly spaced coils to nautilus-like curves.
• polar interference 4 tiles delicate floral rosettes and petal shapes from overlapping circular waves.
• superformula 4 tiles starbursts, rounded polygons and plant-like shapes from one flexible equation.
• domain coloring 14 tiles vivid rainbow swirls and rings from plotting complex functions. Bold and psychedelic.
• inversion 2 tiles ordinary grids turned inside out into families of touching circles.
• hyperbolic tiling 11 tiles polygons shrinking toward a circle's edge, in the spirit of Escher's Circle Limit.

noise

• fBm 2 tiles soft clouds, mist and terrain-like grain from layered noise. Subtle, natural, easy under text.
• turbulence 3 tiles marble veins, billowing smoke and sharp creases from folded noise.
• domain warping 3 tiles fluid, folded strata like agate, oil paint and swirling smoke.
• Worley 4 tiles cells like stone, foam, scales and cracked earth from Voronoi distance.
• thresholding 1 tile flat, stepped color bands like a contour map or a cut-paper landscape.
• elliptic field 2 tiles honeycomb-like nodes and flowing isolines that are periodic by nature.
• Gabor noise 3 tiles fibrous, directional grain like brushed metal, wood or woven fabric.
• marbling 13 tiles swirling, combed bands of color like traditional Turkish Ebru paper.

fractals

• Lyapunov plot 6 tiles glossy bands and sharp spikes mapping order and chaos in population growth.
• Newton basins 3 tiles colored basins with endlessly braided boundaries, from Newton's root-finding method.
• Julia 2 tiles self-similar dendrites, spirals and swirling fractal edges. Classic fractal art.
• Barnsley fern 2 tiles delicate fractal fronds and foliage from four simple transformations.
• fractal flame 3 tiles glowing, silky filaments and smoky light like long-exposure photos.
• Buddhabrot 1 tile ghostly, glowing forms from the escape paths of the Mandelbrot set.

attractors

• Clifford 4 tiles ethereal, folded ribbons of light from a chaotic system.
• De Jong 1 tile diaphanous veils and gossamer clouds traced by a chaotic map.
• Hopalong 4 tiles crystalline lattices and intricate geometric orbits.
• Gumowski–Mira 2 tiles feather, leaf and shell-like shapes from a physics model of particle orbits.
• Bedhead 3 tiles delicate swirling filigree and lace-like loops.
• Svensson 4 tiles smooth, velvety surfaces and soft ribbon knots.
• Ikeda 3 tiles turbulent spiral eddies from a model of light in a laser cavity.

simulations

• Gray–Scott 2 tiles spots, stripes and coral-like mazes from the Gray–Scott model.
• cyclic automaton 3 tiles rotating spiral waves and crystalline color bands.
• physarum 3 tiles organic vein-like networks grown by a slime mold simulation.
• DLA 3 tiles dendritic, snowflake-like branches grown from random diffusion.

drawing

• harmonograph 1 tile looping pendulum drawings like Victorian drawing machines.
• circle packing 3 tiles bubbles and disks of many sizes filling the space without overlap.
• Poisson packing 2 tiles evenly scattered, organic dots with no clumps and no grid.
• layered scatter 2 tiles large, medium and small elements evenly spread like tossed textile prints.
• pursuit curves 2 tiles nested polygons twisting into spirals, like a classic string-art illusion.
• L-system 2 tiles branching plants and space-filling curves from simple rewriting rules.
• field hatching 4 tiles pen-and-ink lines and cross-hatching like an engraving or a plotter drawing.
• space-filling curve 2 tiles one unbroken line weaving through every cell, like a maze or circuit.
• spirograph 4 tiles looping rosettes and guilloche curves from rolling circles.
• line arrangement 4 tiles crossing bundles of straight lines forming geometric webs.

lattices and tilings

• SDF shapes 2 tiles soft, blobby metaball forms and smooth geometric composites.
• Penrose tiling 2 tiles two rhombus shapes with five-fold symmetry, cut from an endless non-repeating tiling.
• Ammann–Beenker tiling 2 tiles squares and rhombs with eight-fold star symmetry.
• Escher tessellation 2 tiles interlocking shapes where figure and background fit together.
• weave 4 tiles interlaced ribbons going over and under, like basketry and woven fabric.
• girih 2 tiles Islamic star-and-polygon strapwork with ten-pointed stars.
• Wang tiles 4 tiles edge-matched squares forming continuous, irregular ribbons and paths.
• hexagonal Truchet 2 tiles curved arcs joining into winding loops and continuous ribbons.
• Chebyshev net 4 tiles fabric-like grids draped over curved surfaces. Woven, warped, 3D.
• Truchet tiles 5 tiles randomly rotated arcs and diagonals forming mazes and circuit-like paths.
• lens lattice 1 tile a grid of glass-like lenses bending the pattern behind them.
• Wave Function Collapse 2 tiles circuit-board tiles — wires, corners, junctions — that always connect.