Wire Relief

Wire Relief turns every picture into a fine wire mesh lifted by its own brightness, with colour panels set between the wires. The bright parts of the picture rise, the dark parts stay low, so the image becomes a small terrain drawn in wire.

How it works

A waiting picture is a flat grey wire grid with no panels. When it becomes the active one, a soft wave crosses it: behind the wave the grid rises into the picture's relief and the panels fill in with the picture's colour, while the wires fade back to a faint tracery over it. In Reveal mode the panels near the cursor lift away and only the bare wire shows, so a visitor can look under the surface of the picture.

Settings

• Cells: how many grid cells run across a picture. A dense grid gives a fine survey mesh, a coarse one a bold terrain.
• Relief: how high the brightest point rises.
• Wire and Wire color: the brightness and colour of the wires.
• Lift: how far the panels lift away under the cursor.
• Change time, Wave and Slant: the speed, softness and angle of the change wave.
• Layout, Dim and Depth: where the pictures sit and how the waiting ones fade.

Use it for

Tech and engineering showcases, data stories, architecture and terrain. For a relief made of pins, see Pinscreen; for one made of lines on a dark ground, see Ridgelines.