Bestsiteever mosaic - new cube mosaic building software

[Roman]

I have quite an experience in creating and demonstrating Rubik's cube mosaic and I was never able to find a good enough tool for that. I have decided to make my own, taking into account everything that I ever had trouble with. Here it is:

>>> bestsiteever.ru/mosaic <<<

Spoiler: Pixelized result examples

Features:

- Easily crop image to match mosaic dimentions;
- Intuitive select-the-best-option UI;
- 4 pixelization algorithms;
- In-depth adjustments on the final stage;
- Download miniature to edit manually and re-upload it back into the tool;
- Convenient adjustable PDF output file.

Possible TODOs:

- Short 'scrambles' to quickly make mosaic from solved cubes

Big thanks

Konstantin Solovyov for sharing his idea on the main algorithm (approximating face photo with the gradient of cube colors). His mosaic builder: https://funcubing.org/MosaicBuilding
Fengyuanchen for his cropper JS lib
danielepiccone for dithering algs.

 

[Skittleskp]

Wow this is really cool! I tried this out and it works really well, great idea.

 

[EngiNerdBrian]

This is pretty neat. Good work!

 

[brododragon]

Sometimes, just get random blobs when using 2 cubes

 

[Roman]

Sometimes, just get random blobs when using 2 cubes

Can you describe the case more verbose, attaching some screenshots?

 

[brododragon]

Spoiler: Screenshots

I think it has something to do with caching because I just tried it (now a couple days later) and, again, same as last time, it worked the first time, but was just smudges every time after that. The first time, I filled everything out by hand, and after that, it started auto-filling. I even tried changing everything just to change it back. Also, Side note, does the program actually tell you how to make the moasiac?

Wow, that is way less of a wall of text than I thought.

 

[Roman]

Spoiler: Screenshots

View attachment 11252View attachment 11253

I think it has something to do with caching because I just tried it (now a couple days later) and, again, same as last time, it worked the first time, but was just smudges every time after that. The first time, I filled everything out by hand, and after that, it started auto-filling. I even tried changing everything just to change it back. Also, Side note, does the program actually tell you how to make the moasiac?

Wow, that is way less of a wall of text than I thought.

Haha, the program totally isn't intended to make good 2 cubes mosaic, but rather 200+!
Also, uploading transparent pictures isn't a good idea because the program doesn't know which color you want to use instead of it. Added to the TODO list.

 

[SenorJuan]

One thing that always struck me about mosaic images is the GREEN. It's always too overpowering, and doesn't really fit well in most images. If green was replaced by black, much better results would be obtained.
When you do get time to develop that aspect of the software, please consider Red/Orange/Yellow/White/Blue/Black as a palette choice.

 

[ProStar]

One thing that always struck me about mosaic images is the GREEN. It's always too overpowering, and doesn't really fit well in most images. If green was replaced by black, much better results would be obtained.
When you do get time to develop that aspect of the software, please consider Red/Orange/Yellow/White/Blue/Black as a palette choice.

Most people don't have black in their color scheme though

 

[SenorJuan]

I imagine no-one has black instead of green ... it's normally in place of white, on white-bodied cubes. Mosaic cubes are normally just that. Sold in large box-fulls, no use for much else, usually black-bodied. So just remove the green stickers, there you have it.
I was merely suggesting it as a palette choice , in addition to the two 'common' choices. He will likely make it completely user-definable, so it's probably not important anyway.

 

[brododragon]

What if there way a option to customize color scheme with 100+ colors. That way, you could just customize to fit your cube.

 

[brododragon]

Haha, the program totally isn't intended to make good 2 cubes mosaic, but rather 200+!
Also, uploading transparent pictures isn't a good idea because the program doesn't know which color you want to use instead of it. Added to the TODO list.

Why do you think it only works the first time in a while?

 

[Roman]

2 features added

1) Count nearly-solved cubes. PDF now tells you how many cubes of each color you should prepare in before.

2) Blur preview. You can click this glasses button to have a better look at the mosaic by bluring the image. Then you can continue adjusting colors.

Spoiler: blur image

 

[Roman]

Custom palette

A feature to use more than 7 colors, save & load palettes will be added later. Also, minor improvements in UI and PDF has been added.

Ideally, the program should work like this: you upload a photo, and it only gives you ONE option - the perfect mosaic.
I've spended literally 3 days on this and it turned out to be impossible without knowing some higher-level information about the image. On the low-level, you never know why the picture has lots of dark pixels - it may be because the photo is dim overall, or because a person on the picture has dark voluminous hair (which is best represented with blue pixels), or he wears a dark coat which occupies like 20% of the image. It really boils down to the question "which regions of the photo must be most detailed and which are not as important".

I am currently on my 4th week of Machine Learning course by Stanford University. I'm seriously thinking on having this problem - automatically converting a photo into a perfect mosaic - as my course work. That is as useful as a comb to a bald man but I need something to practise on

Spoiler

I imagine no-one has black instead of green ...

It's actually not that rare for mosaicbuilders to use black. Couple of examples:

 

[gruuby]

Uh i have a question. I've wanted to get into making cube mosaics but I need to know how to buy all of these cubes

 

[brododragon]

Uh i have a question. I've wanted to get into making cube mosaics but I need to know how to buy all of these cubes

Contact Cubicle/SCS? I think you can get discounts for bulk cubes.

 

[gruuby]

Contact Cubicle/SCS? I think you can get discounts for bulk cubes.

alright

 

[Roman]

This project is now open source: https://github.com/Roman-/mosaic.

Also, you can now display letters inside the sticker squares in the PDF, which is convinient if you use this software for pixelart with different colors:

Spoiler: Letters inside squares

And some UI improvements:

Spoiler: new layout

 

[BradenTheMagician]

I absolutely love this btw

 

[Nir1213]

I absolutely love this btw

big bump oof