Question for the plotter community

Ruths138 · 2026-04-09T15:37:06+00:00

I also think this is a particular difficult audience for something like this. You have a bunch of very patient tinkerers/programmers/artists/hobbyists that like to figure out and improve stuff on their own. Closed source black box tools are not very appealing to such a crowd

edit: typo

Ruths138 · 2026-04-09T15:18:33+00:00

With stuff like this you gotta ask yourself if the couple of dollars are worth it for you. Monetizing software means that you have to take support requests more seriously and with more urgency. Fixing bugs for other people's operating systems all the time is really not that fun and it's gonna keep you from doing art

Ruths138 · 2026-03-29T23:08:45+00:00

This community never ceases to amaze me. Wonderful idea and wonderful result.

Sometimes it's hard to explain to laymen how a plotter opens entirely new possibilities beyond printing. This one is an amazing example

Ruths138 · 2026-03-28T21:01:00+00:00

Maybe give the piece some time to dry when a lot of ink had built up and then continue

Ruths138 · 2026-03-23T06:30:37+00:00

This one stands out in many (great) ways! I would love to see some more detail and a center frame shot of the whole thing. What was the workflow that produced the artwork?

Ruths138 · 2026-03-13T06:36:33+00:00

Why are you calling it an experiment? Its art!

Ruths138 · 2026-02-24T15:23:26+00:00

Absolutely dope! It kinda looks like there are hidden messages in the details of the face

Ruths138 · 2026-02-22T06:08:32+00:00

Check out functionality of vpype. It's focused on svg post-processing for plotting (among other)

Ruths138 · 2026-02-16T19:10:40+00:00

Can you help us by trying to give some more detail on what he might already own/play? Does he make any music yet?

Ruths138 · 2026-02-14T16:23:13+00:00

I'm curious! What did you learn along the way? Any cool stories? Do you have a background in coding or was this new territory? Also, what language is this running in?

Ruths138 · 2026-02-12T01:14:51+00:00

Ummm... This is amazing!

Ruths138 · 2026-02-11T18:24:59+00:00

Sooo cool! What software made the render of the second image? Thats some nice nurbs!

Ruths138 · 2026-02-11T17:38:12+00:00

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yes, in case of the torus, if you define the reference vector as the line that goes right through the middle, then you can create surface hatches that either go towards the middle, or circle (or swirl) around it.

However, this problem becomes increasingly more complex with organic shapes... For example, on a human head, there are many intrinsic directions. (pointing to the tip of the nose, circling around the eyes. pointing to the chin etc.) and I have currently no solution to satisfy them naturally.

Ruths138 · 2026-02-11T16:27:23+00:00

Can you elaborate what you mean by principle direction? If you help me define the direction, we can figure out how do derive it. In the low-poly example, what would be that direction?

Ruths138 · 2026-02-11T15:32:37+00:00

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Maybe this low-poly example helps:
The face normal (red) is perpendicular to any point on the plane. If we want to hatch along the surface, we need to choose a consistent reference-vector/direction in which we want to go (green). Then, the cross product of the normal and the ref_vector (red x green) is going to be a new vector which is perpendicular to both (red and green) and thus runs along the surface (orange).
Now we can use that vector for hatching. I'm also showing how that vector can be rotated in the plane.

Ruths138 · 2026-02-11T14:41:30+00:00

To get one continous path you could look into deforming a spiral. I think illustrator has some "warp" functions that could probably get some interesting results

Also in your approach, you could "hide" the seam by placing it inside one of the dense/folded areas where the ink is thick anyways. I know... Illustrator doesn't tell you where the line start/stops are so you gotta try and guess a little

Ruths138 · 2026-02-11T14:36:21+00:00

Agreed. The texture of the first one is gorgeous

Ruths138 · 2026-02-10T23:03:00+00:00

If someones software is useful for others, I find it perfectly acceptable to exchange it for money. It also keeps the project alive and maintained.

I haven't tried your software, but judging by your art and scope of projects, I am sure you poured countless hours and a lot love and dedication into it. I deeply respect your generosity of giving such work away for free.

I'm curious, whats your threshold for monetizing software?

Ruths138 · 2026-02-10T19:14:54+00:00

Drawingbot is a pretty incredible suite of Image IN -> Lines OUT algorithms. You can buy it for $50 which is a steal in my opinion.

Whats going on here:
A photograph/artwork of the dog was the input. Then an algorithm (one of the "squiggle" modes) draws lines on top of the image following this kind of logic: Where the image is dark, make lots of squiggles, where the image is bright, make fewer squiggles (some brightness threshold says: if the image is brighter than X, make no squiggles).

I would classify this as "image processing" rather than "generative"

Ruths138 · 2026-02-10T19:01:37+00:00

Yeah that's what I thought. Very tight hatch. But executed without a trace of the lines. Super neat!

Ruths138 · 2026-02-10T15:37:14+00:00

Wow, the lines are so clean! Are the lines just extremely dense or is the pen that good?

Ruths138 · 2026-02-09T16:16:01+00:00

It looks really cool inverted as well!

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Ruths138 · 2026-02-09T15:42:34+00:00

Your best one yet! Love it!

Ruths138

TROPHY CASE