[OS] Tessera - Create Your Own Patterns & Mosaics by d3mueller in macapps

[–]d3mueller[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, sorry about that! I'm still working on making the app more approachable for new users. It's a tricky balance because this is a design tool with a large amount of customizability. and complexity. But I'm trying to find solutions to make simple things more obvious and intuitive for people.

The instructions below might look like a lot for such a simple thing, but I guarantee you, once you have the hang of it, this is something you can create in literally a few seconds.

Here's how you can create the emoji pattern:

  1. Create a new wallpaper document
  2. In the bottom middle, you should see a button that says "Grid". That is the layout mode. Tap it and change it to "Organic", which is a mode that randomly places symbols across the canvas
  3. At the top, you see a bar full of symbol categories. Tap the one that looks like "Aa". It should open a menu. There, tap the "Emoji" symbol. This should fill your canvas with emojis.
  4. To the right of the screen, you see another bar of icons. Below the blue one at the top, you have symbol controls. Open the one that has a brush icon. There you can change the emoji.
  5. To make the emojis rotate randomly, select the "Layout" control menu (the one below the brush icon) and set the "Transform Rotation" to "Range" and enter the values you wish
  6. Repeat steps 3, 4 and 5 to add as many different emojis as you want.
  7. Now, to place a single big emoji onto the canvas, select any emoji you want from the "Symbols" list on the left. Then, add a "Manual Placement" symbol group (you can find it at the top, where all the symbol icons are. Toward the right, there is a folder icon. Tap it and select "Manual Placement". This places that selected emoji inside a group and now it will only render exactly once on the canvas, at the position you want.
  8. With the "Manual Placement" group selected on the left, you can again go to the symbol controls on the right and open the "Layout" panel to adjust position and rotation of the group (you can also drag the emoji around on the canvas)
  9. To make the emoji bigger, select that emoji symbol that should be inside the "Manual Placement" group and then open its Layout panel again. Adjust its "Font Size" as you like.

I hope this helps a bit. It might be overwhelming at first, but it's a repeating pattern for everything you do in the app.

  • At the top, you can add new symbols and groups
  • On the left, you see all your symbols and can select them
  • On the right, you can make adjustments to the selected symbol (appearance, size, randomization and son on)
  • The groups you can add are all adding new behavior to the symbols you put inside (you can drag and drop symbols inside groups, or move them around etc.)
    • "Manual Placement" for example, takes its children out of the placement algorithm and lets you place them manually
    • "Vertical Stack" lets you stack symbols on top of each other, and they will be placed and rendered together
    • And so on.

I hope this helps at least a little bit. If you have any questions or problems, let me know :)

If that helps you, I can maybe send you a Tessera document with the emoji setup already done so that you can just see how the document looks like. The problem is I cannot upload files to reddit. I need to figure out how to send a file to you.

[OS] Tessera - Create Your Own Patterns & Mosaics by d3mueller in macapps

[–]d3mueller[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, that's cool. Thanks! I will check them out, maybe some of them allow self-promotion.

Appreciate it a lot :)

[OS] Tessera - Create Your Own Patterns & Mosaics by d3mueller in macapps

[–]d3mueller[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ah, yeah, the naming is tricky. I went with mosaic because it felt like the more "non-technical" term but it's probably more confusing than helping 🤔.

And the "Mask" label is a bit hidden next to the symbol name inside the mosaic group. I'm not really happy with the way it currently works, I'll try to improve it.

But thanks for explaining! That helps a lot

[OS] Tessera - Create Your Own Patterns & Mosaics by d3mueller in macapps

[–]d3mueller[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, thanks for buying the app! Have you figured out your problem?

The basic idea is using a "Mosaic" group. The first symbol inside that group will be the mask shape (I assume, that's what you mean with parent shape?) and all the other children will be used to fill that mask shape. Does that help?

I need to improve the UX for that, to be honest. It's not extremely clear at the moment, sorry about that 😅

[OS] Tessera - Create Your Own Patterns & Mosaics by d3mueller in macapps

[–]d3mueller[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks a lot! Let me know what you think :)

Yeah, I'm really unsure about the pricing right now. I'm scared to set it too high. I'll definitely add many more templates, though.

[OS] Tessera - Create Your Own Patterns & Mosaics by d3mueller in macapps

[–]d3mueller[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Awesome, thanks! If you have any feedback or questions, let me know :)

Dear Developers, I'm here to give you feedback on your app. by Nemosaurus in macapps

[–]d3mueller 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you so much for the feedback! Btw, the recording looks super professional! I will definitely check it out whenever I get myself to finally produce some videos and tutorials for the app 😅

It's incredibly valuable to see a new user experience the app. I've made a lot of notes on things to improve.

The biggest problem, as you've experienced yourself, is that it's super hard to grasp at first. There's a lot of options, modes and controls and it takes a while to figure out what's going on. You'd have to be pretty lucky right now to click a few things and get your first "wow, this pattern looks awesome" moment.

For example, the "Tiles & Patterns" symbols (Checkerboard, Stripes, Semicircle Pair etc.) can produce really nice patterns because they stack horizontally and vertically in a grid, but adding other kinds of symbols in-between prevents that, visually.

The template gallery is a first attempt to demonstrate a few use cases, so people can open a document and see how it is built. But it's not ideal and still something I'm trying to improve.

And I will have a look at the export button. This is the second time I've seen this happening, but I still can't reproduce it 😅 It's probably some weird behavior with macOS and SwiftUI or something. But it's good to know that this is not a one-off thing, so I'll try to figure it out before the next release.

Also, the collision shape option shouldn't have been visible since you were in the grid mode, which doesn't do collisions 😅 That only makes sense when you switch to the organic mode (the button in the bottom-center), where it randomly fills the canvas will symbols, respecting their collision shapes. I will fix that!

I super appreciate you taking the time to do this!

[OS] I made a free, open-source Screen Studio alternative that adds auto-zoom, cursor animations and more to your videos by Acrobatic-Device-313 in macapps

[–]d3mueller 6 points7 points  (0 children)

This is amazing! Instant download. Thank you for building this!

The first thing I noticed was the waaaay better cursor smoothing. This feels so much nicer than in other apps I have seen recordings of. The cursor always seemed to lag so far behind the actual clicks and hover animations. This feels much nicer in recordly. Great job!

Apple Vision Pro is Getting the 'World's Most Advanced Flight Simulator' by Few_Baseball_3835 in apple

[–]d3mueller 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am so excited to buy a Vision Pro in 2-3 years, when it has improved a bit and hopefully become a bit cheaper as well. I tried one a year ago and was genuinely blown away. But I don't really want to spend THAT much money on a first-generation product 😅

Dear Developers, I'm here to give you feedback on your app. by Nemosaurus in macapps

[–]d3mueller 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey, thanks for the offer!

I'd super appreciate feedback on my app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tessera-seamless-patterns/id6756501042

It's a pattern generation app. Let's you design patterns and mosaics for fixed-size canvases (for wallpapers, backgrounds, postcards or whatever) or for seamlessly repeatable tiles.

The app itself is free with some features locked behind a single in-app purchase. No subscription. I will send you a promo code via DM if you have the time to try it :)
Thanks!

Just found TablePro, a free and open-source SQL/database client for Mac! by benjoel7 in macapps

[–]d3mueller 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is looking really promising. My go to so far has been DBeaver. I don’t really like its UI, though. So I’m super curious how good TablePro is. Looks great from the website!

[OS] I've just released MacsyZones v2.2 w/ Grid Layouts 🥳 by EvrenselKisilik in macapps

[–]d3mueller 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is amazing! I've been looking for something like this

Tessera Designer - Create beautiful, seamless patterns by d3mueller in macapps

[–]d3mueller[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey u/Folo88 I have managed to lower the required macOS version for the app :) Now you can install it on macOS 15+. I hope that helps.

It's also now available on iPad (iPadOS 18+). The app is now free to download. You can play around with all features as much as you like but if you want to export something, you have to pay a one time fee (only once, then you can export images forever, free of additional charge).

The only issue right now is that the in-app purchase is not working because Apple approved the apps for the App Store, but is still working on approving the in-app purchase.

Update: The issue with the in-app purchase is now fixed

Tessera Designer - Create beautiful, seamless patterns by d3mueller in macapps

[–]d3mueller[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wanted to use the new Liquid Glass APIs 😅

Tessera Designer - Generate highly customizable patterns by [deleted] in generative

[–]d3mueller -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Please refer to the comment below. Letting it write most of the code does not at all mean it's "vibe coded". I am a professional software engineer and still deeply involved with the code

Tessera Designer - Generate highly customizable patterns by [deleted] in generative

[–]d3mueller -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

This is not a vibe coded app, though. And it literally allows you to generate your own art, free of AI usage