For a couple of months now we have been working on various features we really wanted to implement to make mandala making with Mandalagaba more dynamic and interesting.
We added a tessellation engine:
Literally, tessellations are an arrangement of shapes closely fitted together, especially of polygons in a repeated pattern without gaps or overlapping. Our reasoning was that it would be super cool to duplicate the mandala creation process multiples times to generate beautiful mosaics. We chose triangles, squares and hexagons as polygons for now.
Here's a little gif showing you what this means:
New control panel tools and features
Lots is to be said on these new little gadgets. We are going to start producing tutorials explaining how they all work but in the meantime here is a small breakdown.
- Decrease numbers of axes
- Axis count
- Increase number of axes
- Free form mode (no symmetry)
- Simple symmetry mode
- Mirror symmetry mode
- Mandala mode: allows you to draw mandalas
- Triangle tessellation mode: The axes are limited by triangle patterns
- Square tessellation mode: The axes are limited by square patterns
- Hexagon tessellation mode: The axes are limited by hexagon patterns
- Pattern size ruler: Modifies the size of the patterns' grid
- Draw tool
- Straight lines tool
- Area fill tool (not available yet)
- Canvas background tool bucket: allows you to change the color of your canvas
- Color picker tool: allows you to select a color on your canvas and load it in your colors palette.
- Undo
- Zoom out
- Zoom in
- Stroked thickness
- Stroke smoothing tool
- Scroll tool (only for mobile devices): allows users to scroll around their canvas.
- Advanced options button: opens up the advanced tools.
- Adjust centers on/off button: this tools allows users to activate designated shapes within their design
- All shapes are off: all shapes will be turned off
- All shapes are on: all shapes will be turned on
- Display keyboard commands
- Canvas size
- Adjust canvas to screen
- Color palette
New session option menu
We decided to separate the session related data from the control panel. That made sense on various levels. Number one reason was to declutter the controls panel as well as to regroup things coherently.
- Save button: Saving opens up a big panel where you see your design displayed and where you also various options to share it
- Fork button: forking allow you to duplicate your design and give a new session URL
- New session button: This button allows you to create a new session with a blank canvas and a new session URL
- Session stats button: This opens a pop-up that displays multiple stats and and numbers about your session
- About button: This opens up a pop-up that displays various information about Mandalagaba
- You current session link
Still a work in progress
Mandalagaba still has many more goodies up its sleeves, most of which take a lot of time and effort to conceive, code and implement properly, so please bear with us. We are also quite aware that we released this new version with a couple of bugs and incoherencies here and there. We're doing our best to neutralize the vermin.
Here a couple of things we have planned for the future:
- Allow users to create accounts, stores their mandalas and better collaborate with one another.
- Get the Area fill tool to work (much more a pain in the a.. than one thinks)
- Get Mandalagaba translated in different languages so people living on the other side of the planet don't feel left out.
- Add shapes and/or structures that delimit the pen strokes (still don't know how to go about this but eventually we'll get to it one day or another).
- Allow 3D renditions of holographic tessellated mandalas to be sent to the moon and back.
For your information, please go to our official blog: http://blog.mandalagaba.com/
From there you can see everything we have planned for the future in the roadmap we publish on this blog. Its link it located in the header menu of this page.
We also added a changelog to this blog. A changelog is basically a place where we will be letting you of every little update worth sharing Mandalagaba is getting. The changelog's link is also part of this website and it located in the header menu of this page.