Repper Lite with Webcam

Over the past few months, we have been busy working on a number of important changes to the studio:ludens website. We have basically rewritten the who site from scratch, adding much-needed changes. Our main objective was to make the site a whole, linking all the different pages, experiments and tools together.

We think the navigation is much more clear now and we hope you will be able to find the things you are looking for easily and that you start exploring all the cool stuff we make for you (and create your own!).

New design tools

When you look around our site, you can see that we added a number of new design tools. Most of them are still in an early stage and you are welcome to give feedback on them or request to be a beta tester.

Repper Lite

The free version of Repper has been totally rebuilt to be even more fun and easy to use. We have added some new sample images, a new way of selecting the basis for a pattern, sharing options, a Twitter background uploader, a full-screen option and the possibility to print your design on different kinds of products.

→ Check out Repper Lite!

Repper Pro

We also have a new, more powerful version of Repper for you: Repper Pro. It gives you a lot more options to create the patterns you want, including:

• High-resolution import and export
• Re-coloring tools
• Many more different pattern types
• Runs as an application on your computer (no internet needed)
• Export patterns in any size and on any surface. This allows you to use the patterns in your own design / art projects. Patterns are ready for use with modern printing techniques.

Repper Pro is currently in private beta. To join the beta program, send us an email (info [at] studioludens [dot] com) and tell us what kind of system you’re using and why you want to use Repper Pro. Chances are high we’ll let you play with these new goodies!

→ Check out Repper Pro!

Elise

Originally conceived as a weekend project to learn more about L-systems, Elise has grown into a nifty little app that lets you explore L-systems in real time.

L-systems were originally conceived by Aristid Lindenmayer as part of his research into the growth of organisms. He wanted to find some easy-to-use method of simulation growth of plants. Elise aims to give you the opportunity to try out this method for yourself. You can indeed make beautiful representations of plants, but this is just the beginning. Because Elise works with simple drawing instructions, you can use it to generate a variety of interesting shapes.

Many of the forms that Elise draws can be recognized as some sort of fractal. Because Elise uses recursion, she can easily create very complex drawings from simple instructions.

We are working on a method to export the drawings you make with Elise as SVG files. This allows you to use these drawings in your own creative project and build upon them.

The Elise project is still in a very early stage, and we haven’t released the tool to the public yet. If you are nontheless up to the challenge of giving her a spin, please feel free to contact us. We can give you an alpha version for you to play with and we’d love to hear your feedback.

→ More info

Magic Box

Well there’s an interesting lil’ app right here. Magic Box was originally conceived to make it easy for everyone to design their own custom box in any size. We even won the (un)limited design contest with this little gem. Designing boxes is only the starting point however. We intend Magic Box to be a 2D parametric design tool. With this, you will be able to design any 2D shape and then give everybody the opportunity to make his own version within constraints you set yourself.

How does this work in practice? You design a shape where different aspects are controlled with variables. These variables can later be adjusted by anyone, giving everybody an almost infinite variety of design possibilities.

Try it out by downloading the first version of Magic Box. You can find it on the (un)limited design contest website. Be sure to let us know what you think!

→ More info