Terraces

Terraces turns every picture into a topographic model made of stacked card, the kind an architect builds for a site. The picture's brightness is cut into a set of flat steps, and each step stands one card thickness higher than the one below.

How it works

A waiting picture lies flat, a grey contour map of its own levels. When it becomes the active one, a soft wave crosses it and the terraces rise behind it in full colour; leaving lays them down again. The model is lit by your scene, so the step walls catch the light and the plateaus read as card. In Lift mode the cursor lifts the terraces near it higher.

Settings

• Levels: how many terraces. Many thin layers look like a survey model, a few give broad, high plateaus.
• Relief: the height of the top terrace.
• Sharpness: how crisp the terrace walls are.
• Smoothing: how much the picture is softened before it is cut into steps. Higher gives rounder shapes.
• Edges: the brightness of the thin card edge along each terrace.
• Roughness: the finish of the card.
• Lift: how far the cursor lifts the terraces.
• Change time, Wave and Slant: the speed, softness and angle of the change wave.

Use it for

Architecture and landscape practices, maps, data stories and craft brands. The flat, line-drawn version of the idea is Contour Lines; stacked plates seen from the front are Strata.