First look at Peacock, the Flex-based Pattern generator

By Avi Muchnick on September 10, 2007 | Permalink | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (6)

Peacock was originally conceived as an Adobe Flex-based helper tool for Phoenix and Hummingbird which would allow users to easily create new tilable textures and patterns to paint with or to layout on 3D meshes. We quickly realized that the tool was so innately limitless in potential that it deserved a full spot in our tool suite.



In my first time playing with the alpha I was able to make a stitched weave pattern (useful if you're creating a photorealistic couch), and a few patterns that I'd love to have on a tie. Here are some tie examples (admittedly my taste is probably awful).





So how does Peacock work?

Essentially, it's a math based creation tool, which means that you don't need any innate skill to create new effects and works... just some patience to play with the settings and sliders and watch all the cool effects and patterns it can generate. Peacock acts a lot like a stack of effects: Each item in the effect stack alters the contents of the canvas (created by previous items in the stack).



What kinds of patterns can Peacock make?

- Organic patterns, such as wood, marble, electricity, clouds, water and fire.
- Tiling patterns, such as kaleidoscoped images and artwork.
- Artificial patterns such as plaid, pinstripes, drapes, weaves, sewing, bricks and mason work.
- Trippy patterns like waveforms, plasma effects and fireworks.
- Honestly... it's essentially unlimited.

So what kinds of uses will Peacock have?

- Users will be able to paint with custom brush patterns and texture meshes that can be used in other Aviary tools.
- Users will be able to create tilable wallpaper.
- Users will be able to create custom fabric patterns (i.e. creating your own tie fabric and custom clothing) through our marketplace.

Finally, some more examples of the fun I had while writing up this post. :)

Funky tie pattern



Red drapes



Persian rug pattern



Edit: Peacock is currently under development and is only available for private alpha testing. To see it live in action, please sign up for a beta invitation - set your interest as pattern generation