Braid Rug Visualizer
Dec. 5th, 2022 01:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lillilahSo, over the summer, I started working on a program to show what a braided rug would look like, based on what colors you started with. The goal was to help me and Joel choose how we wanted to make our rug: did we want some kind of organized color scheme or did we want it to be random within the colors we chose? Eventually, we left the US, and I got busy with other things. However, recently, I read something about handmaking rugs, and this morning, I remembered that I still hadn't answered the question of how we were going to make the rug. When I don't feel well, I often take on projects that are more tedious (I guess) than I am usually interested in doing. Today, when I sat down with my bowl of pea soup, ear stuffed up, exhausted from a poor night's sleep, I was totally ready to complete some tedious task. So, I set to work on the braided rug visualizer. I love "'perfect' is the enemy of 'done'", so I made some changes to simplify my goals for the visualizer. Then, I stole some code from my palette program and got to the point where I could make a single braid (already working) in something like the colors we chose for our rug in both an organized scheme (all the dark colors together, all the middle-luminosity colors together, all the light colors together) and a more random one.
Joel has said all along that he wanted a more random color scheme (dark and light luminosity mixed, so a strand of dark red braided with medium green and light blue, then medium red with light green and dark blue). However, when he looked at the mock-up, he thought that he liked the more organized color scheme better. He wasn't positive, though, so I needed to make more than a single braid. Before I got into anything insanely complicated like making the braid into a spiraling oval, I decided to generate a bunch of vertical strips. I wasn't positive about how to do that. Luckily, though, when I made the braid program, it generated each piece of the braid based on a single point, so I just needed to get the program to move that point to the right after generating a strip of braid and then make another strip. I had hoped to be really accurate and do it all with math, but in fact, I just guessed approximately how far I was going to need to move it, and after a few tries came up with the right amount.
From there, Joel was definitely able to say that he preferred the more organized version over the random one. (Note: the colors are a rough approximation of what we would use. I am too lazy to find perfect matches.)
But wait! I changed how many times each color was used, so that there was more of a pattern in each. When I did that, we both agreed that the more random one was better than the organized one. What we're going to have to do is mark each change of color, so that we can splice in the new strands at the appropriate time. Normally (if I recall correctly), you don't make the rug as you are braiding it. That, I think, would be like knitting a sweater as you are spinning the wool. However, if we want the colors to be just so - and it seems that we do - then we are going to have to do it as we go. The benefit is that if we screw up the braiding or if something doesn't quite work as we have done it, we will only need to unbraid a few feet rather than a huge long mess.
Joel has said all along that he wanted a more random color scheme (dark and light luminosity mixed, so a strand of dark red braided with medium green and light blue, then medium red with light green and dark blue). However, when he looked at the mock-up, he thought that he liked the more organized color scheme better. He wasn't positive, though, so I needed to make more than a single braid. Before I got into anything insanely complicated like making the braid into a spiraling oval, I decided to generate a bunch of vertical strips. I wasn't positive about how to do that. Luckily, though, when I made the braid program, it generated each piece of the braid based on a single point, so I just needed to get the program to move that point to the right after generating a strip of braid and then make another strip. I had hoped to be really accurate and do it all with math, but in fact, I just guessed approximately how far I was going to need to move it, and after a few tries came up with the right amount.
From there, Joel was definitely able to say that he preferred the more organized version over the random one. (Note: the colors are a rough approximation of what we would use. I am too lazy to find perfect matches.)
But wait! I changed how many times each color was used, so that there was more of a pattern in each. When I did that, we both agreed that the more random one was better than the organized one. What we're going to have to do is mark each change of color, so that we can splice in the new strands at the appropriate time. Normally (if I recall correctly), you don't make the rug as you are braiding it. That, I think, would be like knitting a sweater as you are spinning the wool. However, if we want the colors to be just so - and it seems that we do - then we are going to have to do it as we go. The benefit is that if we screw up the braiding or if something doesn't quite work as we have done it, we will only need to unbraid a few feet rather than a huge long mess.
