tessellimage(6x)

📦
version 6.17 · 10 versions
, in fedora 44

✨ tessellimage — the XScreenSaver manual 💖

okay bestie, sit down, hydrate, because we're about to talk about tessellimage. it's one of the XScreenSaver hacks (6x, section six of the XScreenSaver manual, iykyk) and it is literally the art-kid of the screensaver family.

🦋 NAME

tessellimage — Converts an image to triangles using Delaunay tessellation.

no cap. it takes a picture and turns it into triangles. 🎀

🫶 SYNOPSIS

tessellimage [--display host:display.screen] [--visual visual]
[--window] [--root] [--window-id number] [--delay number] [--duration
number] [--duration2 number] [--max-depth number] [--max-resolution
pixels] [--no-outline] [--no-fill-screen] [--fps]

💅 DESCRIPTION

so the whole vibe is this: it converts an image to triangles using Delaunay tessellation, and then it animates the result at various depths. 🌈 not all triangles are equal though — more triangles get allocated to the visually complex parts of the image, because obviously the spicy areas deserve the detail.

how does it decide? it's actually so clever. first it computes the first derivative of the image: the distance between each pixel and its neighbors. then the Delaunay control points get chosen by selecting those pixels whose distance value is above a certain threshold — aka the pixels that have the biggest change in color/brightness. those are the ones getting the triangle budget. periodt. 👑

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • --visual visual — Specify which visual to use. Legal values are the name of a visual class, or the id number (decimal or hex) of a specific visual.
  • --window — Draw on a newly-created window. This is the default.
  • --root — Draw on the root window.
  • --window-id number — Draw on the specified window.
  • --delay number — Per-frame delay, in microseconds. Default: 30000 (0.03 seconds).
  • --duration number — Length of time until loading a new image. Default: 2 minutes.
  • --duration2 number — Length of time until increasing or decreasing the triangulation depth. Default: 0.4 seconds.
  • --max-depth number — The maximum number of triangles to render. Default: 40000.
  • --max-resolution pixels — The size of the loaded image will be constrained to this width or height, to reduce the number of pixels examined. Think of it as an initial low-pass filter. Default 1024.
  • --outline | --no-outline — Whether to outline the triangles.
  • --fill-screen | --no-fill-screen — Whether to zoom in on the image to completely fill the screen, or to center it.
  • --fps | --no-fps — Whether to show a frames-per-second display at the bottom of the screen.

🌸 ENVIRONMENT

  • DISPLAY — to get the default host and display number.
  • XENVIRONMENT — to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global resources stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property.
  • XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW — The window ID to use with --root.

🎀 SEE ALSO

X(1), xscreensaver(1)

Copyright © 2014-2018 by Jamie Zawinski. Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. No representations are made about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

💜 AUTHOR

Jamie Zawinski.

okay that's the whole thing, bestie!! go forth and tessellate. 🦋✨

X Version 11 — 6.17-1.fc44 (13-Oct-2026), signing off, mwah 💋 🫶

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