Tess™ Tessellation Creation Software

Tess™ is a stand alone dedicated tesellation drawing package. It allows you to use any of the 17 wallpaper groups, the 7 frieze groups, and 24 rosette groups. It also knows about all the Heesch tilings too!

It keeps track as you draw, or edit, the shapes so they conform with the chosen symmetry. Everything updates in real time so you can see how the tessellation will look. There is no set seed so any of the instances can be edited and the others will update appropriately. Here is a snapshot showing the editing of a Heesch tiling called 'Tessman'. As an option Tess shows you reflection and translation lines, etc, as shown here.

In use, a symmetry is chosen and you draw directly on the page. This is copied to the other instances as you draw and a shape is built up. It can then be pulled about to alter the outline. Points can be added and moved, all guided by the original choice of symmetry. In the case of Heesch tilings, an outline mesh of the symmetry is produced and you change this. Above the central head you can see a line with an editing skeleton where this can be done. Lines can be straight or curved and the degree of curve can be changed. Having set out the outline, other shapes like ears can be added and will appear in each repetition of the picture. Fill colours and outlines can be set for each indiviual shape.

The shapes themselves are vector graphics so changing their size does not cause 'jaggies' and they print well.

Tess also has a 3D facility to wrap your art around such things as cones and toruses. An automatic signature can be added to your artwork if required. Tess lacks a proper manual but the 'tool tips' help feature explains what each of the tools does and includes explanations of the tiling and symmetry groups. A short time experimenting will give you the basics quickly.

Tess can be used right up to the finished work, or the outline of a tessellation can be exported into Photoshop or other drawing programs, and finished there. We include examples of both types on next pages.

In Doctor David's opinion Tess is one of the best programs to use to design tessellations, especially if you do not already own Illustrator (see next programs in the software list.) It is a complete package at a very reasonable cost of $36 from Pedagoguery Software here or see our links page under 'Information'

Below is an example of tessellations designed in Tess. Click on one of these numbers > 1, 2, 3, 4 < to see other tessellations made by Doctor David using Tess software.

 Finished Tessman - symmetry; Heech TCCTGG. Designed completely in Tess