NodeBox (beta)

[RobA]

I was slaloming the byways of the intertubes and for some reason came across something called NodeBox, which lead me to their current beta release of NodeBox2

From the site:

NODEBOX CREATES GENERATIVE ART USING PROCEDURAL GRAPHICS. IT'S A NEW WAY TO APPROACH GRAPHIC DESIGN.

It seems to be able to produce similar results to other software like Processing and Context Free or even an l-system generator, but node based.

Check out the gallery from the original version of NodeBox (mac only)

I downloaded it and played through the documented examples and in a couple hours was able to come up with this version of Schwarzkreuz's compass rose(s):


The beauty of this software for things like this is that:
1) It creates vectors (in pdf format, but inkscape can read them in and render a png quite nicely)
2) Everything in the nodes remains parametric, so you can scale, translate, change multiples of things, etc. and you end up with a "new" image with just a few small changes
3) The "source" file (node tree) is insanely small - so incredibly complicated images can be rendered.
4) It is java with a python code interpreter, so if you can program, you can custom code pretty much anything.

Not to scare anyone, but here is a screen-grab of the node tree I created to make this rose:


Also, for fun, here is the pdf I exported (free to use for any purpose):


And lastly, I have attached a zip of the nodebox source file.

-Rob A>