About Super Shapes Exploration Kit

About Super Shapes Exploration Kit

Mission:

The primary goal of this application is to allow you to create new and interesting shapes for use in other projects. Examples that immediately comes to mind are the creation of interesting looking buttons for Graphical User Interfaces (GUI's) or for uniquely shaped web buttons. Other uses could just be 'Art' for the sake of art. Whichever way you decide to use these shapes, there are literally thousands of one-of-a-kind shapes that have yet to be discovered.


History:

The Super Formula (tm) was published by the Belgian Botanist Johan Gielis in 2003. Much more information is readily available on the Internet (see references below).


Super Formula image
This is the Super Formula in polar form.

What is the Super Shape Formula?

The Super Shape formula is classified as a generalization of the equation for the ellipse (x*x/a + y*y/b = 1). If you enter the paramaters a=b=1 and m=n1=n2=n3=2, a circle will be displayed. Changing only the a and b parameters to values other than one will display various ellipse-like looking shapes.

References:


Wikipedia - Super Formula
Paul Bourke's excellent description of the Super Formula
Super Formula page by Matthew Whitaker
Super Formula page by Susan Stepney
A PDF which examines the Super Formula more rigorously