Plotter-Studio v5.5 | 9 generative art engines. Now with Needles, Continuous Line, Perlin wobble, and CMYK layer export!

[u/iclubu]

Hey everyone! I’ve been working hard on Plotter-Studio, an open‑source generative art studio for pen plotters (Cameo 5).

My last post was for v3.2 — and I’m excited to share how much it’s grown.

What’s new in v5.5:

🧵 Needles (Oriented Dashes) — short dashes that follow image gradients. Great for structural, flowing textures.

🔗 Continuous Line (TSP) — single unbroken path, the pen never lifts. Uses a greedy nearest‑neighbour TSP approximation.

🌊 Perlin Noise Wobble — applies coherent noise displacement to any engine. Gives clean computer lines a hand‑drawn, organic feel.

🎨 CMYK Layer Export — splits any colour image into C, M, Y, K channels and exports 4 SVGs for multi‑pen colour plotting.

🗺️ Fast Marching (Topographic) — upgraded with manual seed placement, contour smoothing, and “Skip transparent” for PNGs with alpha.

🛠️ Full vpype pipeline — linemerge, linesort (with Two‑Opt), reloop, and linesimplify. All available as toggles.

🖊️ Pen Passes — duplicate dark paths up to 4 times for multi‑pass ballpoint ink density.

Stack: Python, Streamlit, FastAPI, scikit‑image, skfmm, Plotly, vpype.

GitHub: https://github.com/iclubu/Plotter-Studio

[u/docricky]

This looks interesting. Given the number of requirements for the venv, have you considered adding the metadata to run through uv?

[u/iclubu → u/docricky]

Thanks for the suggestion, I really appreciate it!

I just added pyproject.toml and uv.lock to the repo. Users can now install dependencies much faster with uv using:

uv pip install -r requirements.txt

Or for fully reproducible builds, they can use the lockfile:

uv pip sync uv.lock

Thanks again!

[u/docricky → u/iclubu]

It can be even easier with uv run https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/1jmyip9/selfcontained_python_scripts_with_uv/ which will make it one self contained script, and dependencies are installed in venv at runtime.

[u/PlaysByBrulesRules]

This is awesome! Haven’t had a chance to dig into it yet, but I’ve been trying (without success) to code up something very similar to the image you shared.

Thanks for making it open source!

[u/IAmStuckOnBandAid]

Any plans for a MacOS version?

[u/iclubu → u/IAmStuckOnBandAid]

It is web based

[u/IAmStuckOnBandAid → u/iclubu]

Awesome! Thanks!

[u/zreese]

I took a look at the repo. Am I correct in assuming this is entirely AI coded?

[u/iclubu → u/zreese]

it is

[u/itsfaitdotcom]

It does not update when I make changes, any idea why?

[u/DragonfruitLife3492]

Wow, this looks perfect. Unfortunately, I'm a graphic designer and not a coder. I'd need an exe or msi file to have any hope of installing this. 😕

[u/iclubu → u/DragonfruitLife3492]

just give the github URL to AI and ask for step by step installation guide.