

Show HN: PolyGen App, turn gradients and photos into pretty low poly patterns - nbartlomiej
http://www.polygenapp.com

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KnightHawk3
Why did you decide to make this mobile only?

Personally I would use it the most from my computer, considered a port ;)

~~~
nbartlomiej
I'll be happy to make a desktop version if users want it. Comment here, reply
to this tweet
([https://twitter.com/polygenapp/status/560846810735206400](https://twitter.com/polygenapp/status/560846810735206400)
) or let me know in any way if you're interested.

Edit - And as for "why mobile-first", I wanted to make the app casual and
approachable. You can take a photo of your teacup and have a cool low poly
version of it in an instant. Or generate a pretty colourful wallpaper with one
tap. But I'd love to build a desktop version too. Larger screen and finer
control over the pointer would give some new possibilities.

Edit 2 - In case somebody didn't notice, you can generate a wallpaper for your
desktop from the mobile app. Just choose a desktop option in the "Size"
setting.

~~~
windsurfer
10 years ago, I would never have guessed that I would be finding a new
application on my laptop, sending a link to my phone, installing the app on my
phone, generating an image, and then emailing myself an attachment back to my
laptop to be used as my desktop background.

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andrewrice
Reminds me a bit of "trianglify", a low-poly background generator built on
d3.js:
[https://github.com/qrohlf/trianglify](https://github.com/qrohlf/trianglify)

~~~
nbartlomiej
I've tried d3.js, but decided to go with iron wallaby's delaunay
([https://github.com/ironwallaby/delaunay](https://github.com/ironwallaby/delaunay))
implementation for performance reasons. The difference was especially visible
when working with photos.

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WhitneyLand
It's nice, good work. I wonder if you might be better off without the ads
though. Not much revenue, and without them you can possibly build a bigger
user base as a reputation point for your resume.

~~~
ctdonath
$1 may be too much friction at this point. Not something most people consider
must-have, but willing to put up with ads to fiddle with.

~~~
kristopolous
I think the suggestion was to give a clean version of the thing away

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normloman
1996-2004 | Gradients and bevels on everything.

2005-2010 | Concentric vector circles on everything.

2011-Present | Gradients with triangles on everything.

In all seriousness, this is a nice idea, but it seems really limited for just
an app. It should be a photoshop filter! (or I'm sure GIMP could use some
love)

------
o0-0o
Crashes constantly using a google galaxy Nexus. I would love to have it work
though.

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sunspeck
Haven't tried it out yet, but looks nice.

Surprised to see that this wasn't authored by Mario Klingemann, creator of the
very clever LowpolyBot:

[http://lowpolybot.tumblr.com/](http://lowpolybot.tumblr.com/)

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cordite
This reminds me of voronoi diagrams, except the vertices seem to be applied as
a best-fit around contrast and hue differences--then the cell being filled
with the average color of such.

~~~
ihaveajob
Beautiful. I bet you could get some very nice results if you use a Voronoi
diagram using the color gradient as distance function. Even better if you
chose points not randomly, but based on the slope of this distance, so they're
concentrated in "feature points".

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rebel
Pretty cool app! If you're interested in adding an option to sell prints, I'd
love to help. You can reach me at interest at printdropper.com

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k__
Crashes when choosing a picture on Ascend Mate.

The back-button gets hidden per default and when used he doesn't go back to
the main menu but leaves the app.

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gravitronic
my favorite bot in this gene is on twitter:

[https://twitter.com/lowpolybot](https://twitter.com/lowpolybot)

~~~
rev_bird
Took a look at what it was doing, but recently it seems to mostly be engaged
in ongoing conversations with other bots spitting out nonsense images.

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kaoD
I can't try the app (stuck on a Gingerbread phone) but it seems fun. I'm eager
to try it.

As far as I can tell, the user chooses the location of triangle vertices,
right? It would be interesting to try a genetic algorithm there though it
probably fits best in a desktop version.

Also, did you experiment with Voronoi diagrams instead of triangulation?

~~~
nbartlomiej
For abstract patterns, points are chosen "randomly" (grid with randomised
offsets). For photo-based ones, I'm using JSFeat's YAPE06
([http://inspirit.github.io/jsfeat/#features2dcorner](http://inspirit.github.io/jsfeat/#features2dcorner)),
plus some own customisations. I'm constantly looking for ways to improve
generating photo-based patterns; if anyone has some ideas here, I'd be happy
to listen.

I've played with genetic algorithms, but without anything practical. Indeed,
this might be more appropriate for desktops.

I've experimented with Voronoi too, but the results weren't as pretty. The
cells were more rounded; and the low poly style was gone.

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ubercow
I'm getting a force close when trying to choose a picture on a Sprint Samsung
Galaxy Note II. I have no experience with android development and don't know
how the force close reports work, but one was sent and I hope you can figure
out the bug.

Really looking forward to trying this out! Will be great for wallpapers.

~~~
nbartlomiej
I'll be looking into it. In the meantime you might experiment with a different
camera (pick "System" in the "Camera & Gallery" option). And many thanks for
your comment.

~~~
AndrewHampton
It looks very nice, but it's crashing on my LG G3 as soon as it loads. I see a
white background and red/pink banner at the top for about 3 seconds, then it
auto-closes. I'll keep it around and watch for auto-updates and hope it's
fixed.

~~~
nbartlomiej
There's a bug in Crosswalk which causes crashes on LG G3
([https://lists.crosswalk-project.org/pipermail/crosswalk-
help...](https://lists.crosswalk-project.org/pipermail/crosswalk-
help/2014-October/000506.html), [https://crosswalk-
project.org/jira/browse/XWALK-3365](https://crosswalk-
project.org/jira/browse/XWALK-3365)). I will be looking for a workaround.
Thank you for reporting the issue.

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btbuildem
Crop seems constrained to the aspect ratio of the original image - is that a
bug or a feature?

~~~
nbartlomiej
Crop aspect ratio matches the "Size" setting, located one screen earlier; so
it's a feature for now. I plan to revisit the crop screen sometime in future
and bring more control there. Thanks for your comment!

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ThomPete
I am surprised nothing showed up on the mac app store for "low poly art"

I would pay for such an app.

~~~
nbartlomiej
I'll be looking into it. Similar topic:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8967391](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8967391)
.

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avmich
Is it similar to this approach - [http://rogeralsing.com/2008/12/07/genetic-
programming-evolut...](http://rogeralsing.com/2008/12/07/genetic-programming-
evolution-of-mona-lisa/) \- ?

~~~
nbartlomiej
No, it's different. Here I've described how I'm working with photo-based
patterns:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8968113](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8968113)
. More technical details on PolyGen's Medium:
[https://medium.com/@polygenapp](https://medium.com/@polygenapp) .

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ctdonath
The regenerate button seems to cycle (inconsistently?) thru the grain sizes.
Undesirable; if I pick a grain size and regenerate, I'm looking for a suitable
arrangement at that size.

Otherwise, nifty!

~~~
nbartlomiej
The "refresh" button randomises as much as it can, but you can prevent a
section from being randomised by "locking" it (clicking on the tiny lock
icon).

So you can pick a size, lock it and hit "refresh" as much as you wish. I'm
glad that you like the app, cheers!

~~~
ctdonath
Ah, didn't realize "refresh" was randomizing my prior-chosen settings; thought
it should just re-apply those settings to the randomization process.

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nuclearghost
Running on iPhone 5 with iOS7 seeing a weird issue where only about the top
third of the photo is rendering.

Works fine when rendering with colors.

Anyone else seen something like this?

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mbrock
I'm curious about how well this works on videos...

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mcmancini
Neat app. A cool feature would be the ability to extract colors from a photo
(like Adobe Kuler) and use those in the Abstract Colors pattern.

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coryl
I've been paying an artist $15 per picture to do this for a project :O

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tenken
Show HN, version 3.x ..... soooo not "new" ? :)

but it looks nice! downloading now.

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sauravt
Oh man I am working on a very similar app, you beat me to it. :)

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davidrusu
looks like it could be interesting but very obnoxious ads

~~~
georgechen
You can support the developer via In-app purchase to get rid of those ads you
know.

~~~
davidrusu
really.. how am I supposed to be a millionaire if I throw money away like
that??

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robinhoodexe
I like it

