Sort have been doing some research on Doyle spirals which lead to the concept of Circle Packing. Looked all over the place for programs (free of course) that does these but to no avail. Sort of faked it using a seamless texture that I created and then running Mathmap Droste and also Sculpture Generator (program created by Carlo Séquin) with that texture. As a side note, I did enter a wish list for such a feature with G'MIC, but don't know how hard it would be to implement.

When I saw the Droste image I thought it was really cool looking then I scrolled down and saw the second image. Now that's just plain awsome looking. WTG Lyle!

Thanks Drac; I re-edited the post to add some reflection effects to the orbs too (faked that too of course; don't know if there is a light mapping for reflections in GIMP since GIMP is a bitmap editor and I'm too lazy now to learn 3D programs. lol).

Yeah, I see the difference. Does look a bit better.

Heard that on the 3D programs. Looks like way too long of a learning curve for me.

Gettin' late, I'm outta here. See ya on the flip side.....

Appreciate the feedback Drac; believe I'm about to hit the sack too (tired I am).

Embarassed to say how long it took me to both figure out then create these additional packed sphere/lens tiles. Had fun figuring them out though. Used the lens pattern for the sphere as well.

So way very cool! I ...might expand myself and try this yet!

I need to learn how to use mathmap. Neat images!

Pretty sweet Lyle i grabbed the patterns for Sculpture Gen.

Persistance is key Jorden. Mathmap>Distort>Sphere is one of my favorite mathmap presets Merrak. Hope you like the textures Rod. Though I don't show them here much if at all here anymore (not elsewhere much either), I still take Sculpture Generator out for a spin a few times a month for fun. Got another excuse to in order to showcase these textures. lol

One more trick to share if you are going to use these textures in Sculpture Generator. You need to double or quad tile the texture before saving the resulting ppm file. I just double tile then run small tile for this texture (in essence, though smaller, the texture gets quad).

Don't you guys know that I never give up (sometimes takes me years literally)? lol

Found this cool site with pixel bender plugins. Not GIMP, but still had to share. Even has an online routine which I used to create this result (downloaded the PB filter but haven't played with it yet).

http://pixelero.wordpress.com/2011/05/0 ... e-pattern/

That is very cool Lyle. I'll bet your dad gets a kick of all these things you do with his pic.

He definitely liked the glass sculpture that I did of him recently Molly and thanks for the comments. Very disappointed in his Pixel Bender code (ran it both in Pixel Bender toolkit which is free as well as in CS5 (as we both know not so free; lol). Gives square tile like results; not sure if the author did this intentionally or not. Oh well. At least the online version is cool. The other fixed radius circle packing preset does work in CS5 and it's pretty cool too (didn't link this one but it's on the same website as I linked previously). At least my quest is getting closer. The only other routine that I found was for a program interface called Rhino and it isn't free.

not free is a euphemism ,it is close to 1000 $ and complex beyond hope (well let say require some mounts of learning )

Thank for the link for the web app and the pixel blender filter

lol; I didn't actually look up the cost of Rhino, but did see some complaints of the cost. Looks like it's mainly for the academic types anyway.

well students may have for "only" 199 $

i stumble here http://www.percolatorapp.com/ it is commercial and only for iphone so i could not try but if possible for smartphone for sure it is possible also for computers interesting

On the contrary i found also the web app delusive but maybe it is related to the image size

your example is centered, but in my try was no way to center the effect , and the center was placed close the upper left corner of the image

i try twice same weird offset

I saw Perculator too, but, since I don't have an iPod/iPad, it does me little good PC. I wonder if there is an iPod/iPad app runner for PC's? Here was a Legos app that I saw a while back too that looked good (but again, would do me little good).

Forgot to mention that I ran across this cool Java app too, but it requires more work then I'm willing to put in to use it to it's full potential.

http://www.math.utk.edu/~kens/

WOW that is a good find!!

yes looks quite complex ...but for us, maybe David would like dig in

I mean you know David if you describe what you wish he will do his best
but if you add to the description the link for the algorithm that you wish implemented then the chances to see your wish fulfilled are exponentially multiplied

(long ago i give him a link for the algorithm of the principal layer modes...less then 48 hours later gmic had a lot of layer merging modesavailable, including a new original one and many not even available in gimp)