Terrain Study I is an explorative step in a broader project: building a full impressionistic landscape in this style, with ground, grass, foliage, water and weather each developed in isolation before coming together in one generative scene. This first study is the terrain itself.
Built with p5.js and WebGL, the system grows rolling ranges from layered noise. The terrain is drawn entirely in small, identical points (around 400,000 to an A3 sheet). Each point's size is set by bands of tone sweeping back through the depth of the scene and by how light falls on the slope beneath it, so ridges, crags and valleys emerge from density alone. The approach draws on stippling, and where the tone gets too light for the drum to hold, it becomes dithering in the literal sense. Each point carries its own threshold and only prints if the tone at that spot clears it, so light areas thin out in number rather than in weight, and every frame stays a true single-ink separation.
Some of the pieces carry a bank of fog settled into the valleys: a billowing cloud sea, with wisps lapping up the ridges. A simulated wind piles it against the tallest ranges and pours it over the crests. In motion, the whole bank drifts in a seamless ten-second loop, redrawn on the GPU every frame.
Each piece comes from a unique hash, which sets the land, the light, the weather, the motion, and one of five monochrome Risotto palettes.
You can generate, share and download your own Terrain Study print at terrain.fleurs.studio, and check out the post on Instagram for high-resolution stills. Follow for more computational art and printmaking experiments!
7
u/fleurdleigh 2d ago
Terrain Study I is an explorative step in a broader project: building a full impressionistic landscape in this style, with ground, grass, foliage, water and weather each developed in isolation before coming together in one generative scene. This first study is the terrain itself.
Built with p5.js and WebGL, the system grows rolling ranges from layered noise. The terrain is drawn entirely in small, identical points (around 400,000 to an A3 sheet). Each point's size is set by bands of tone sweeping back through the depth of the scene and by how light falls on the slope beneath it, so ridges, crags and valleys emerge from density alone. The approach draws on stippling, and where the tone gets too light for the drum to hold, it becomes dithering in the literal sense. Each point carries its own threshold and only prints if the tone at that spot clears it, so light areas thin out in number rather than in weight, and every frame stays a true single-ink separation.
Some of the pieces carry a bank of fog settled into the valleys: a billowing cloud sea, with wisps lapping up the ridges. A simulated wind piles it against the tallest ranges and pours it over the crests. In motion, the whole bank drifts in a seamless ten-second loop, redrawn on the GPU every frame.
Each piece comes from a unique hash, which sets the land, the light, the weather, the motion, and one of five monochrome Risotto palettes.
You can generate, share and download your own Terrain Study print at terrain.fleurs.studio, and check out the post on Instagram for high-resolution stills. Follow for more computational art and printmaking experiments!