In a chaotic world, Zaos Tools’ Terrazzo is an oasis of order and symmetry. A yin-yang complement to Xaos’s first Macintosh product, Paint Alchemy, Terazzo is a cool plug-in module that transparently places powerful mathematical algorithms into the hands of the digital artist. Using one of 17 planar-symmetry groups, Terrazzo creates intricate repeating tiles from any bitmapped image. It’s rather like having an adjustable kaleidoscope on your desktop.
Terrazzo works within Adobe Photoshop, Fractal Design Painter, and other graphics programs that accept plug-in modules; it adds 1MB to the host application’s RAM requirements. The filter’s uncomplicated interface displays a thumbnail of the source image (either the one you are currently working with or a user-specified alternate) along with a motif — a variable marquee that bounds the area used in the pattern calculations. The symmetry groups, carrying fanciful descriptions such as Money Bees and Prickly Pear (named after American quilting patterns), dictate how much rotation, offset, and mirroring Terrazzo will apply to the sample. Once you’ve chosen a symmetry group and set the motif, Terrazzo displays a sample tile. You can adjust feathering, opacity, and color channels before rendering the tile into a repeating pattern across the image. You can also save individual tiles as discrete images, for later use as a tiled fill, in Photoshop, or as a repeating texture map for 3-D models.
Terrazzo is fun to use, but it’s not easy to control precisely, nor can you always predict your results. You can’t always tell whether interesting Terrazzo tiles will make attractive repeating patterns. While it is possible to gain a basic sense of how Terrazzo’s symmetry groups affect an image, experimentation and serendipity are still intrinsic parts of the tile-making process.
Beguiling as its geometric magic can be, Terrazzo lacks a few features that 3-D artists in particular might desire. Unlike Specular International’s TextureScape, Terrazzo does not allow the user to apply three-dimensional effects, such as lights, bumps, or bevels, to the surface of the pattern. One workaround is to create gray scale patterns and use them as separate bump maps. Artists using Terrazzo with Fractal Design Painter can define tiles as paper textures to produce interesting relief and lighting effects.
The Last Word Turning a random group of pixels into a geometric pattern may not be everyone’s consuming passion, but Terrazzo has definite appeal for a select niche of fabric, graphic, and video designers, as well as folks who just yearn for a little more balance and harmony in life.
Hoffer, Avi. (November 1994). Terrazzo 1.0. Macworld. (pg. 75).
Xaos Tools, Inc.
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terrazzo_1.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
