I’ve attempted this one many times and only recently had proficient enough tools to bring it to fruition.
Clouds
Perilous Shores
I found a super fun Hex Map generator, this just had to be plotted even though the SVGs it makes aren’t super plotter friendly.
26,237 Pen Strokes
Little by little I’m increasing the complexity of what I can send to the plotter. As an image passes through the various programs I choose for a particular render, I push their limits and often run into bugs, memory limits and others. As much as possible, I dockerize each step so they are easier to summon and improve on their own. This also allows for pipelining.
I finally found a fast and reliable SVG->GCode converter. Inkscape’s is reliable but it’s extremely slow. I had to rewrite a part of it to be iterative rather than recursive so it could handle the size of the SVGs I am throwing at it.
Inkscape itself has a command line mode so some of the repetitive stuff I use it for are dockerized, for example to ungroup objects and break apart compound paths. It’s truly amazing.
I kind of want to publish all this but I have no idea if I violated any licenses frankensteining code from various sources. And I have much better things to do with my time than to find out. Things such as this wonderful plot:
