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

5 days ago (landscape.bairui.dev)

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!

22 comments

subairui

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rdksu  2 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 !

  • subairui  2 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!

twosky  2 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!

  • subairui  2 days ago

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

anirbanhere  12 hours ago

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

yardshop  2 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!

  • subairui  2 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!

Invictus1001  5 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

  • subairui  5 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!