Why we've rebuilt our pattern engine

[Wouter]

To understand where we’re going, let’s start with where we’re coming from…

The journey up to 2024

We started building the online Repper app in 2017 and released it two years later.
The basics were in place, but it looked a little different than today:

Repper as released in 2019 — Try to spot all the differences with today!

In the last 5 years, we’ve massively extended the product:

• 20 more tilings
• New effects like the unique Metamorphosis
• 3D preview on 16 realistic products
• Collection management
• Vector support
• Dream mode
• Near infinite export (up to 1 GIGA-pixel)
• And much more…

I’m so proud of the app @Alexander and I (@Wouter) built, with the help of amazing people like @Michel_Repper and evangelist users like @MeyAroyo, @RozFruchtman, and many of you

Repper today — Our little pattern paradise

Rebuilding the pattern engine

So why rebuild?

The Repper app had grown organically and was in need of some cleaning up. Not just that, but there are new features we’re keen to develop that require a more robust foundation.

You can imagine the current app looking something like this under the hood:

That gets hard to build on, especially has we have some big plans! And so, @Alexander took on the massive task of rebuilding the pattern-generating core of the app.

Now the app is a lot more structured:

In essence, we have from bottom to top:

1. Bottom layer: A lot of ingredients for making patterns (tilings, effects, parameters)
2. Middle layer: One central engine for turning those ingredients into recipes
3. Top layer: Different parts of the app use the engine to show all the patterny goodness.

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After the rebuild: What the future may hold

All this effort means that, with this new setup, we can make new features faster and dream bigger

I realise this may all feel a bit abstract, but here’s the essence:
Before we had hard-coded pattern recipes; now we can generate them on-the-fly, and this opens up a whole new range of possibilities.

It’s still early days, but here are a few directions we’re exploring.

(Note: These are explorations and we cannot guarantee if or when they would be available )

#1 Much more advanced tilings

Tilings with repetitions on different levels, that create very intricate and totally unique patterns, never seen before.

#2 Create your own tilings

What if you could not just make your own patterns, but create the tilings (= recipes) themselves? We have built some prototypes and while we aren’t quite ready to show you, I for one am very excited about this whole new product area.

#2 Mandalas

Talking about whole new product categories! We’re also still in the early stages with this, but we hope to make designing mandalas super easy, the Repper way.

#3 Advanced style effects

Repper works with any source image, but sometimes it can be hard to find the right style or an image with enough resolution. With advanced style effects, we hope to address both those issues in one fell swoop.

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Phew, that was a big story! I hope you got a better sense now of why we took on this massive rebuild this year! We are a small team and so these things take time, but we keep diligently working to offer you evermore pattern possibilities

Let us know in the comments what new features you’d be most excited to see

[karensphotoart]

Sounds awesome! I can’t wait for the mandalas! Yay!

[Claire_Maunsell]

More advanced tilings maybe? Making your own sounds exciting, but hoping it would be within my skill set…

[George]

Can’t wait for the create your own tilings, awesome

[Wouter]

We’re doing some conceptual exploration on mandalas These are very different from surface patterns, so what we’re trying to figure out is how to create a design tool that has all the options you’d want to make endless mandala variations, but with the simplicity of use that you know us for. This happens to be the kind of challenge that I as a product designer love to solve

[Wouter]

Absolutely, Claire: if we end up building a tool to make your own tilings, it won’t require technical knowhow to use, that we will build in! We want it to be playful, though this would indeed be an abstraction layer higher than Repper and may ask for a bit more imagination and curiosity into what makes for a good tiling (and good patterns from that)!

[karensphotoart]

Right now I have an app on the phone, Mirror Lab, that has a mandala setting, but it’s limiting. Can’t wait to see what you can offer in the Repper App! No pressure now

[RozFruchtman]

Hi Wouter…
At the risk of sounding silly… What does it mean when you say: Make your own tilings? Repper creates a tile for each pattern it creates.

[Wouter]

@RozFruchtman I understand your question, it comes down to subtle naming differences (that we may need to think about renaming, possibly):

Tile: The smallest repeatable piece of a pattern. An export setting in Repper, for if you want to repeat your pattern to a larger surface in other software or print services

Tiling: The recipe/template to make a certain pattern. In Repper, we currently have about 40 of them.

The idea of making your own tilings is that you’d be able to make your own pattern templates/recipes. So you’d be making your own unique designs for patterns like the Pyramid, Honeycomb, etc.

I realise the wording is a little confusing here. It is technically what they are called, but maybe we should consider picking two more distinct names!

[RozFruchtman]

Hi Wouter:

Thank You for the detailed explanation.

OH… The part about making your own unique designs and patterns like Pyramid and Honeycomb - I DID NOT get! THAT would be super cool, IF we could do that!

I’m also interested to see what comes of the Mandala patterns.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE the borders feature that Is one of my all-time faves!

Thanks again Wouter!