What is Lissajous 3D

Lissajous 3D can make many beautiful relaxing animations. Inspired by sound, the first Lissajous patterns were made by reflecting a beam of light in mirrors attached to two tuning forks to make a dot of light that bounced around following a Lissajous curve.

Lissajous 3D trace the curves using a ribbon, or a tube, and the dot can oscillate in three or more directions, which takes the patterns into 3D.

By varying the frequencies, the material, the lighting, transparency and other options you can make new patterns of your own. Then you can show your new pattern as a screensaver on your computer, save it as an image to use in your own designs, or save it as an animated gif to upload to your web site or share with your friends.

Here is an example using a ribbon:

ruby gold ribbon - Movie

For a movie of one of the clips at other resolutions, see Day full of promise.

Here is a gallery of many Lissajous patterns (opens in a new window)

You can make the ribbon as a whole wider or narrower (it varies in width also along the length of the ribbon), or change the colours and materials, and the background colour.

The materials use the ambient and specular colours for real physical materials such as copper, gold, etc. This models the way real materials reflect or absorb light. The image here shows gold and ruby with the material transforming from gold to ruby and back again along the length of the ribbon.

Here is an example using a hexagonal cross section tube instead:

simple 3D lissajous - Movie

To find this feature in Lissajous 3D, go to Pattern | Ribbon, select Tube and set the number of sides to six.

You can also set the lighting for dawn, sunset, a sunny day and other presets or make your own.

pearl necklace at dawn - Movie

This uses pearl for the material, and dawn for the lighting.

To find this feature in Lissajous 3D, investigate Pattern | Lights, and Pattern | Material. For the beads effect, go to Pattern | Ribbon, switch on the Tube and use Make Beads

Many more examples are included with the program and as part of the screen saver. What these images don't show is that all these shapes are animated - they transform in shape as time goes by.

Like this:

Or click on the Movie button below any of the images above.

To read more about Lissajous 3D, go on to:

More Features

To get the program and the screen saver, download and install Lissajous 3D.

Download Lissajous 3D

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