Lissajous 3D download, SoftEmpire.com. 3D, children

Make many beautiful relaxing animations based on Spirograph and Lissajous patterns, taken into 3D. You can use any pictures as textures to wrap over the patterns - then as the curves animate, your pictures can twist and turn like reflections in a hall of mirrors!

The original 2D Lissajous patterns in the 19th century used a beam of light reflected from mirrors attached to two tuning forks. Lissajous 3D traces the curves using a ribbon, or a tube. By using vibrations in three or more directions, these patterns become 3D.

You can use the example patterns or the randomiser as a starting point. By varying the ribbon, material, lighting, transparency, frequencies and other options you can make them into new patterns of your own.

Comes with a screen saver to show your animations, with any music as background (mp3, wav etc). It can also select tunes at random from a folder or cd.

You can set the patterns to respond to chords played in the companion program Tune Smithy, and the other way round, the fractal tunes can acompany the screensaver.

Many pattern transforming effects, some related to things that happen with real world Lissajous patterns, - pattern drift so they continually change shape, gravity, magnet, inversion (turn inside out), friction, etc.

Also you can make spirographs - those patterns made by rolling wheels within each other - this is the same idea but taken into 3D.

Features include, as well as the textures, materials, transparency, colour ripples, and various forms of ribbon or tube including star cross section tubes, twisting tubes and bead effects, strings of spheres, and ribbons with ripples. Fog can be added as well depending on the distance into the shape - so you can have shapes that disappear in and out of the mist. Also you can make curves that spiral around themselves as they trace the Lissajous curve.

The patterns can be exported as movies, image frames or 3D animations in the Obj file format recognised by many 3D programs.