Tag: seizenn instructions

Baltic grid mode

Posted on by Jeff

Simple idea may take time to emerge.

Baltic grid mode presentation

Up to now, in Seizenn, there were two ways to draw a baltic pattern.

1) In the mode “ Edit an inkle loom pattern”, you can play with pickups and drops thread by thread. I will refer to this as the “realistic tool”.

2) In the mode “Edit a square pattern” you can create a grid (or block) chart. I will refer to this as the “Baltic grid” mode.

Grid charts are more common for Baltic pickup patterns, but they do not give a realistic preview of what the resulting band will look like.

As both are useful, I was asked several times to be able to switch from one to the other and back. I was quite reluctant because it would have been very difficult to program and it would have work in very few cases. The two tools work a very different way, you can draw pattern in one tool that would be impossible to create with the other (three color pattern, carpet pattern etc).

With the experience of what I did with tablet weaving tool (sulewasi mode), I tried an other way to fulfill the need, far simpler.

In the realistic tool, in the “Edit Mode” panel I just added a feature that allows you to select “baltic grid”. It will not work for 3-color pickup patterns, it’s just for simple 2-color baltic patterns.

For a 5 min video => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQToadxlWv8

When you select it, you switch from

to    

 

Grid parameters

To use this mode, you need to adjust where the baltic grid begins on the left and where it ends on the right.

In the threading pattern, you see the first blue dot is done with the 11th thread, and the last one is done with 29th thread

When you select “baltic grid”, new options become available in the “display options” panel.

In this panel, where it says “Threads” set the “first” and “last” values, 11 and 29 in this example.

Grid use

You can then click on the grid to create your pattern

If you leave the “baltic mode”, you can see the result

In the “Display Option” panel you can also adjust opacity of the grid with the “baltic visibility” slider.

If you create a picture while you are in “baltic grid”, the grid pattern will be visible. Thus you can choose the pattern representation you want during weaving.

When you use   or Sunna Heddle pattern, first and last parameters are set automatically.

Selection tool

In the “Edit Mode” panel,  when you select “baltic grid” mode, a “selection tools” checkbox appears. If you check this function, new buttons appear.

You can then select an area on the grid with you mouse. The area is surrounded with dashed blue and yellow line.

When an area is selected, you can act on it using the different buttons. For example you can flip it horizontally.

You can also copy and paste an area. With this selection, click on “selection copy”

 

Animation showing copy and paste

Use clipboard to copy pattern from square tool

you may notice that a representation of the selected area appears on the tool panel.

You can then select the up-left point of the place you where you want to paste the pattern.

 

Then click on “selection paste”, you then get :

 

Animation showing how to copy a pattern from square tool.

Conclusion

There are limitations. For example it may not work if you have two baltic patterns side by side on the same band with a plain weave gap between the two. When you save a pattern, grid position is not saved. Of course will not work for 3-color patterns.

Hope this new mode will help you.

 

A few improvements for this new year

Posted on by Jeff

Hi

For this new year I present to you some small improvements for Seizenn.

Lists of patterns

When you save a pattern, it is by default visible for everyone in the public list. It’s now possible to make it private using the “restrict” button in you private list.

Loom colors

You can have colors in your «loom palette» that are not used in your pattern. Now those colors are bordered with brown like this :

Rigid heddle pattern

In loom editor you can load default pattern for some popular rigid heddle

You then get

New tools

Seizenn was first designed for plain weave or baltik bands. I then added a grid tool. I recently wanted to explore some other weaving technics.

Now you have two new tools.

The first one to draw heddle loom patterns

https://www.raktres.net/seizenn/#/heddle

A second one to draw tablet patterns

https://www.raktres.net/seizenn/#/tablet

Those tools are very simple, I mainly created them to undestand how those kinds of pattern work. They reuse main principles of seizenn, and I just added a few new things like right-click menu in tablet tool.

I could improve them if they would be useful for someone.

Jeff

Extract colors from a picture

Posted on by Jeff

Hi

In Celebration of plain weave (page 27) Annie MacHale explains how to extract colors from a picture to create a color palette.

I tried to add a basic function like this in Seizenn. (https://www.raktres.net/seizenn/).

Open the Palette tool and go down the page to

You first need to load a picture. You can get a random picture from unsplash.com with  or load your own picture with . If you use Seizenn on a smartphone, you can get access to your camera !

For example, with a random picture, you can get :

Then Seizen use two different algorithms to extract colors from this picture :

With the first button, you take all those colors to create a new main palette

But it could be tricky to find yarns with the wanted colors. So instead of getting all the colors in a new color palette, use the second button.

Imagine that you use this main palette (the default one) and that you have all those colors at home

When you click on the “filter” button, Seizenn will try to find de nearest colors in your main palette that will fit the colors from the picture. You then get

(Sometimes, if main palette quite poor, it chooses colors that doesn’t seem to be very relevant)

Clic on “Add colors…” to get those colors in your loom palette and remove colors you don’t want to use.

You are now ready to design a pattern inspired by your picture

Link to the pattern : https://www.raktres.net/seizenn/?sc=Fa8

Maybe not the perfect tool, but a first try to see if it would be useful for someone.

Jeff

 

Seizenn interface evolutions – text buttons

Posted on by Jeff

Hi

The first version of seizenn (https://www.raktres.net/seizenn/editor.html) was created to work on desktop computers. When I began v2, I wanted it to work both on desktop and mobile devices and not to limit it to English speakers. I thought icons should help me for that two goals.

I received feedbacks saying the new interface was too disturbing.

As I continue to learn new programming things, I’m now able to adapt the new interface https://www.raktres.net/seizenn/

Now on top right of the screen there is a new menu :

  • the broken chain only appears when you are offline
  • clic on the icon with the profile to log. It’s red when you are not connected.
  • the third one shows if seizenn detect a desktop or a mobile device.
  • with the first checkbox, you choose if you want menu on the left of the screen or at the top
  • with the second checkbox you choose if you want to use icon or text button
  • use the selector to change language.

As an example, with the icon/text checkbox you can choose between

  or

When you open Seizenn on a desktop, the tool uses text button on the left by default. On a mobile device, it uses icons on top. You can change as you want.

You may notice that I now use the new link https://www.raktres.net/seizenn/ for the new version in replacement of https://www.raktres.net/seizenn/v2/. The old version remains available on https://www.raktres.net/seizenn/editor.html

I hope those new evolution will help you.

Jeff

 

A new way to register patterns

Posted on by Jeff

Hi

From the start, the method of saving and registering pattern was a bit clumsy.
You had to save the pattern in Seizenn’s screen, get two codes and then go and register it in the blog. It was the only way I had found to be able to assign a pattern to an author with a very simple Seizenn tool and without an authentication system (https://www.raktres.net/blog/2018/10/06/display-your-patterns-in-the-gallery/)

The new version of Seizenn ( https://www.raktres.net/seizenn/) allows me to develop much more efficient functions, for example a new way to save and share patterns.

First you log in the tool.

For that, open the main menu with and choose the  menu.

Type in the username and the password you use on the blog.

When it’s done, a little character appears at the top right of the screen. You are connected.

If you then save a pattern with the    button, you only get the shortcode to your pattern :

Go to the gallery page from the main menu.

The screen is devided into two parts, “List of public patterns” and “List of your patterns”. Click on the title to open the panel you want to open and click on “load” to refresh the list.

Your pattern should now be visible :

I will now work on improving personal page and gallery screen, adding functions, improving the interface.

Do not hesitate to leave a comment if you have any remarks or proposals.

Basic Instructions for using Seizenn − Band Weaving Pattern Editor

Posted on by Jeff

Hi

While creating my Seizenn Band Weaving Pattern Editor, I exchanged a lot with Annie MacHale (https://aspinnerweaver.blogspot.com/) to try to offer a simple and efficient tool for weavers. As one of the first users, she did very interesting things with it. Her book of course – https://www.etsy.com/fr/listing/658320160/inkle-weaving-design-book-par-annie – but also some posts on her blog (for example https://aspinnerweaver.blogspot.com/2020/04/baltic-pickup-part-two.html).

She told me that when she presents this tool, new users are frequently confused by very basic tricks. I tried times ago to write some instructions on this blog but they are obviously not sufficient.

As I am working on an major update, Annie very kindly proposed to me few days ago to write basic instructions for beginners. And she improved it after presenting it to some of her friends.

She did a great job, on 4 pages you have enough instructions to let you understand how the tool works and it gives you keys to continue to explore it by themselves.

You can get it here : Instructions for using V1 Seizenn by Annie MacHale

 

http://www.raktres.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Instructions-for-using-V1-Seizenn-by-Annie-MacHale.pdf

With her permission I will translate it into french. And adapt it and include it directly into the next version.

Jeff