Show HN: Turn your name into a tree in an infinite procedural shanshui landscape

Posted by subairui 7 days ago

Hi HN! I made this after collecting hundreds of "name → tree" submissions at ITP.

Live: https://landscape.bairui.dev/ Source: https://github.com/pearmini/infinite-landscape Plant a tree: https://tree.bairui.dev/

Pan and zoom an infinite procedural landscape. Each name is converted to ASCII codes, which grow into a unique tree (breadth-first branching; repeated digits become mathematical roses). Mountains use midpoint displacement + Perlin noise, with SVG radial gradients in the blue/green/gold palette from Wang Ximeng's "A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains."

Inspired by Lingdong Huang's {Shan, Shui}* (https://github.com/LingDong-/shan-shui-inf). Every tree is someone's name, signed with an APack stamp (https://apack.bairui.dev/).

Try planting your name, then pan along the ridgeline to find it. "My trees" lets you jump back to ones you planted.

Happy to answer questions about the terrain algo, name→tree encoding, or the Riso print we tiled at ITP Winter Show!

Comments

Comment by rdksu 4 days ago

This is so cool! Could you add a feature to export my tree as an svg please? Would love to put it on my git profile !

Comment by subairui 4 days ago

Thanks rdksu. This means a lot to me. I just added the download feature. Now you can download your name as a PNG or SVG!

Comment by anirbanhere 2 days ago

Planted a tree! However I thought palindromes or anadromes might have some symmetry but it wasn't showing up in the tree.

Comment by subairui 2 days ago

[dead]

Comment by twosky 4 days ago

It’s a creation done in a way I hadn't imagined. It’s a great idea, and I liked the way it was executed. I hope there will be a wider variety of wood types available in the future so we can choose!

Comment by subairui 4 days ago

Thanks, twosky! That's a really interesting idea. I'll play around with it and see where it leads!

Comment by yardshop 4 days ago

Very simple and beautiful! I planted a couple too.

I wish I could zoom in further to get closeups of trees and names and the mountains.

All the same it's very nice!

Comment by subairui 4 days ago

Hi yardshop, thanks for the kind words and the wonderful suggestion. I just updated the project so you can zoom in much further than before. Feel free to try it again!

Comment by elnatro 4 days ago

I love the procedural trees, I was wondering if I should use the seals as a logo for some of my open source projects.

Great work!

Comment by subairui 4 days ago

Thanks, elnatro. And yes, of course! The “seals” are made with a project I built called APack. You can try it here: https://apack.bairui.dev/

Comment by Invictus1001 7 days ago

This is very clean & creative project I planted a couple of trees of different names & symbols the one with constant reptition of characters are attractive especially when you can see a unique pattern

Comment by subairui 7 days ago

Thanks, Invictus1001! I use a deterministic algorithm to convert a name into a tree, so the same input always generates the same result. I'm glad you enjoyed exploring the different patterns—repeated characters often create some particularly interesting structures!

Comment by passiflora96 4 days ago

Wow this is really creative. Keep up the good work!

Comment by subairui 4 days ago

Thanks passiflora96! I'll share more when I build more!

Comment by m1rsh0 4 days ago

I really liked the idea! Great work.

Comment by subairui 4 days ago

Thanks mirsh0! I hope you enjoy it!

Comment by iJohnDoe 4 days ago

Cool idea. Fun to see these creative things online.

Comment by subairui 4 days ago

Thanks, iJohnDoe! That's exactly the whole point. I want more people to engage with it!