Ah! awesome!

intothecontinuum:

Islamic Stars by Jim Bumgardner. Source code for Processing here.

If you are running a browser which supports Java, then you can use your mouse to interact with the applet above.

Move the mouse horizontally and vertically to change the image. X and Y control two different parameters.

This was an experiment with a method used to produce Arabic/Islamic star tiling patterns, from an underlying grid of polygons.

Starting with an underlying grid of polygons, the star pattern is produced by drawing lines from two equidistant points on each polygon edge at some fixed angle (controlled by the mouse). At the point where the lines would intersect with other lines, they are clipped.

Y controls the distance from the center of the polygon edge.
X controls angle.