Halftone Studio
A real-time halftone rasterization playground built to feel like an instrument, not a filter.
Context
A creative coding playground for real-time halftone rasterization. Traditional tools lock halftone behind destructive filters. I wanted the parameter space to be live: drag a slider, watch every dot reshape at 60fps.
The interesting part
The core loop computes luminance gradients across large image buffers, then draws dots to canvas. The decision that made it work: dot radius is derived from a smooth luminance gradient instead of raw pixel brightness. That kills aliasing artifacts on gradient-heavy images and keeps the dot matrix stable while parameters move.
Show it
The video above is the tool running live, not a render: dot pitch, angle offset, and raster style (circular, diamond, line) are tweaked in real time. Switching raster styles is instant because nothing is recomputed, only the draw pass changes.
What I learned
Most creative tools feel heavy because they recompute state on every input. Separate the compute pass from the draw pass and the tool starts to feel alive.