# Bestsiteever mosaic - new cube mosaic building software



## Roman (Jan 3, 2020)

I have quite an experience in creating and demonstrating Rubik's cube mosaic and I was never able to find a good enough tool for that. I have decided to make my own, taking into account everything that I ever had trouble with. Here it is:

>>> bestsiteever.ru/mosaic <<<



Spoiler: Video













Spoiler: Pixelized result examples












Features:

- Easily crop image to match mosaic dimentions;
- Intuitive select-the-best-option UI;
- 4 pixelization algorithms;
- In-depth adjustments on the final stage;
- Download miniature to edit manually and re-upload it back into the tool;
- Convenient adjustable PDF output file.

Possible TODOs:

- Short 'scrambles' to quickly make mosaic from solved cubes

Big thanks

Konstantin Solovyov for sharing his idea on the main algorithm (approximating face photo with the gradient of cube colors). His mosaic builder: https://funcubing.org/MosaicBuilding
Fengyuanchen for his cropper JS lib
danielepiccone for dithering algs.


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## Skittleskp (Jan 3, 2020)

Wow this is really cool! I tried this out and it works really well, great idea.


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## EngiNerdBrian (Jan 4, 2020)

This is pretty neat. Good work!


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## brododragon (Jan 16, 2020)

Sometimes, just get random blobs when using 2 cubes


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## Roman (Jan 18, 2020)

brododragon said:


> Sometimes, just get random blobs when using 2 cubes



Can you describe the case more verbose, attaching some screenshots?


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## brododragon (Jan 18, 2020)

Spoiler: Screenshots






I think it has something to do with caching because I just tried it (now a couple days later) and, again, same as last time, it worked the first time, but was just smudges every time after that. The first time, I filled everything out by hand, and after that, it started auto-filling. I even tried changing everything just to change it back. Also, Side note, does the program actually tell you how to make the moasiac?

Wow, that is way less of a wall of text than I thought.


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## Roman (Jan 18, 2020)

brododragon said:


> Spoiler: Screenshots
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Haha, the program totally isn't intended to make good 2 cubes mosaic, but rather 200+! 
Also, uploading transparent pictures isn't a good idea because the program doesn't know which color you want to use instead of it. Added to the TODO list.


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## SenorJuan (Jan 18, 2020)

One thing that always struck me about mosaic images is the GREEN. It's always too overpowering, and doesn't really fit well in most images. If green was replaced by black, much better results would be obtained.
When you do get time to develop that aspect of the software, please consider Red/Orange/Yellow/White/Blue/Black as a palette choice.


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## ProStar (Jan 18, 2020)

SenorJuan said:


> One thing that always struck me about mosaic images is the GREEN. It's always too overpowering, and doesn't really fit well in most images. If green was replaced by black, much better results would be obtained.
> When you do get time to develop that aspect of the software, please consider Red/Orange/Yellow/White/Blue/Black as a palette choice.



Most people don't have black in their color scheme though


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## SenorJuan (Jan 18, 2020)

I imagine no-one has black instead of green ... it's normally in place of white, on white-bodied cubes. Mosaic cubes are normally just that. Sold in large box-fulls, no use for much else, usually black-bodied. So just remove the green stickers, there you have it.
I was merely suggesting it as a palette choice , in addition to the two 'common' choices. He will likely make it completely user-definable, so it's probably not important anyway.


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## brododragon (Jan 18, 2020)

What if there way a option to customize color scheme with 100+ colors. That way, you could just customize to fit your cube.


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## brododragon (Jan 18, 2020)

Roman said:


> Haha, the program totally isn't intended to make good 2 cubes mosaic, but rather 200+!
> Also, uploading transparent pictures isn't a good idea because the program doesn't know which color you want to use instead of it. Added to the TODO list.


Why do you think it only works the first time in a while?


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## Roman (Apr 6, 2020)

2 features added

*1) Count nearly-solved cubes*. PDF now tells you how many cubes of each color you should prepare in before.


*2) Blur preview*. You can click this glasses button to have a better look at the mosaic by bluring the image. Then you can continue adjusting colors.


Spoiler: blur image


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## Roman (May 14, 2020)

Custom palette






A feature to use more than 7 colors, save & load palettes will be added later. Also, minor improvements in UI and PDF has been added.

Ideally, the program should work like this: you upload a photo, and it only gives you ONE option - the perfect mosaic.
I've spended literally 3 days on this and it turned out to be impossible without knowing some higher-level information about the image. On the low-level, you never know why the picture has lots of dark pixels - it may be because the photo is dim overall, or because a person on the picture has dark voluminous hair (which is best represented with blue pixels), or he wears a dark coat which occupies like 20% of the image. It really boils down to the question "which regions of the photo must be most detailed and which are not as important".

I am currently on my 4th week of Machine Learning course by Stanford University. I'm seriously thinking on having this problem - automatically converting a photo into a perfect mosaic - as my course work. That is as useful as a comb to a bald man but I need something to practise on 



Spoiler






SenorJuan said:


> I imagine no-one has black instead of green ...



It's actually not that rare for mosaicbuilders to use black. Couple of examples:


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## gruuby (May 14, 2020)

Uh i have a question. I've wanted to get into making cube mosaics but I need to know how to buy all of these cubes


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## brododragon (May 14, 2020)

Nuuk cuber said:


> Uh i have a question. I've wanted to get into making cube mosaics but I need to know how to buy all of these cubes


Contact Cubicle/SCS? I think you can get discounts for bulk cubes.


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## gruuby (May 14, 2020)

brododragon said:


> Contact Cubicle/SCS? I think you can get discounts for bulk cubes.


alright


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## Roman (Jun 3, 2020)

This project is now open source: https://github.com/Roman-/mosaic.

Also, you can now display letters inside the sticker squares in the PDF, which is convinient if you use this software for pixelart with different colors:



Spoiler: Letters inside squares







And some UI improvements:



Spoiler: new layout


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## BradenTheMagician (Oct 27, 2020)

I absolutely love this btw


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## Nir1213 (Oct 27, 2020)

BradenTheMagician said:


> I absolutely love this btw


big bump oof


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## Roman (Dec 16, 2020)

Bump, I've made a video describing all the features that this tool offers for the moment.


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## Jam88 (Dec 16, 2020)

Wow this is amazing! Now I just need to find 10000 cubes...


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## abunickabhi (Dec 18, 2020)

Nice video Roman, lot of customization possible too with this new update. My college juniors will make better mosaics now hopefully, r' U2 F' E2 F U F E2 F' U r.


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## tanminggang (Jan 1, 2022)

Roman said:


> 我在创建和演示魔方的立方体马赛克方面有相当丰富的经验，但我从来没有找到足够好的工具来实现这一点。我决定自己做，考虑到我曾经遇到的所有问题。这里是：
> 
> >>> bestsiteever.ru/mosaic <<<
> 
> ...





Spoiler: 像素化结果示例






Roman said:


> 添加了2个功能
> 
> *1) 数几近解的立方体*。PDF 现在会告诉您之前应该准备多少每种颜色的立方体。
> View attachment 11650
> ...








Roman said:


> 2 features added
> 
> *1) Count nearly-solved cubes*. PDF now tells you how many cubes of each color you should prepare in before.
> View attachment 11650
> ...


The PDF file generated by adding custom colors cannot be counted. Please help solve this problem, or the number of colors on the first page of the generated PDF is blocked and the display is incomplete



Roman said:


> 我在创建和演示魔方的立方体马赛克方面有相当丰富的经验，但我从来没有找到足够好的工具来实现这一点。我决定自己做，考虑到我曾经遇到的所有问题。这里是：
> 
> >>> bestsiteever.ru/mosaic <<<
> 
> ...





Spoiler: 像素化结果示例






Roman said:


> 添加了2个功能
> 
> *1) 数几近解的立方体*。PDF 现在会告诉您之前应该准备多少每种颜色的立方体。
> View attachment 11650
> ...


添加自定义颜色生成的PDF文件无法统计。请帮忙解决这个问题，或者生成的PDF第一页颜色数被遮挡，显示不全


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## Roman (Jan 10, 2022)

tanminggang said:


> The PDF file generated by adding custom colors cannot be counted. Please help solve this problem, or the number of colors on the first page of the generated PDF is blocked and the display is incomplete
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Sorry it took me so long to respond! I might set up e-mail notifications for watched threads.

It is essential that you understand what color counting really does.

"44 blue" does NOT mean that there are 44 blue pixels in this picture. Instead, it means that out of all the 3x3x3 cubes in this mosaic, 44 of them either have completely blue face (so all 9 stickers are blue) or they are almost blue (least 7 out of 9 stickers). This allows to prepare necessary amount of cubes beforehand: you take all your scrambled cubes and solve blue faces on 44 of them.

This color counting information is useless if you use this tool for things other than Cube mosaics.


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## cube84 (May 26, 2022)

This is a little confusing for me as a non-cuber. I require algorithms in order to create the patterns for the cubes.


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## Roman (Jun 5, 2022)

Updates

- UI improvements and simplifications
- UI theme changed
- Three pixelization options added (see picture)
- The amount of steps in the gradient method isn't limited to 3 steps anymore

Code-related updates:
- Update to bootstrap5
- Lots of refactoring



Spoiler: New pixel patterns









Spoiler: Palette editor with new UI









Spoiler: UI improvements


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