Wavatars Process

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Dec 18, 2007

Filed under: Projects 124 comments

A few people have expressed interest in how Wavatars are made. Here is the long boring explanation for those overly curious souls. Again, if you want the WordPress plugin, go for it. If you want to adapt it for non-Wordpress use, help yourself.

All of the following is done in PHP: This isn’t exacly the most complex process in the world. Pretty simple, but the results are amusing to me.

Step 1 is to generate an 80×80 blank PNG using imagecreatetruecolor (). That image is then flood filled a color of a random hue (max saturation, low lightness value) with imagefill ().

wavatars-1.jpg

Step 2 selects a random “fade” pattern from a possible 4. This is a simple white PNG with a gradient mask that will cause the background to fade from that base color to white. This makes the icon a little more interesting, and adds some variety.

wavatars-2.jpg

Step 3 selects a random face shape from the possible 9. It loads in the mask of the chosen face and slaps it into place. I have a black border on the mask, because that looks nice.

wavatars-3.jpg

Step 4 selects a color for the head. Again, this is a random hue, max saturation, high lightness value. It then flood fills the image starting in the very center at 40, 40. Note that this creates an interesting limitation. The face has to be a single enclosed polygon that covers the center. This means you couldn’t make a head from two shapes which weren’t touching, and you couldn’t make a shape with a hole right in the middle

I could get around these limits by using imagefilter (IMG_FILTER_COLORIZE) instead of imagefill (), but I found that not all setups of PHP will support this, and that if it fails the wavatar will come out white. I figured portable, functional code was more important than something which would silently fail in confusing and unrecoverable ways for some users.

wavatars-4.jpg

For each mask shape, (circle, triangle, square, etc) I have a matching “shine” filter. This is another gradient-masked PNG of pure white, which is used to make the shape look glossy. It’s totally opaque in the areas with lots of shine, low transparency accross the main surface, and fully transparent where the “shadows” should be. I made these using the “emboss” tool in Paint Shop Pro 8.

Step 5 puts this shine image into place. Note that this step is optional. (You’ll need to have the know-how to edit the source if you want to skip it, though.) If you skip it, the Wavatars will look a little more cartoony and a little less like they’re made of iPod plastic.

wavatars-5.jpg

Step 6 selects a random set of eyebrows and slaps them on. No fancy filters or coloring this time. The brows go on before the other features so that they will appear “behind” eyeglasses.

wavatars-6.jpg

Step 7 selects a random set of empty eyes / eyeglasses and slaps them into place.

wavatars-7.jpg

Step 8 selects a set of pupils and adds them.

wavatars-8.jpg

Step 9 adds the mouth.

wavatars-9.jpg

The last step is to resample the image from the default size to the icon size the user selected (assuming they differ) and save the resulting image to disk.

That’s it. All done. You could, if you wanted, add all kinds of additional shapes to any of the categories, or replace ones you don’t like. If you change the number of available images, you’ll have to edit the source code so that the plugin knows how many images are available. Don’t worry – you can do this even if you don’t know PHP. Just look inside of wavatars.php and near the top you’ll see a few lines:

define("AVATAR_SIZE", "80");
define("WAVATAR_BACKGROUNDS", "4");
define("WAVATAR_FACES", "11");
define("WAVATAR_BROWS", "8");
define("WAVATAR_EYES", "13");
define("WAVATAR_PUPILS", "11");
define("WAVATAR_MOUTHS", "19");

Just change the number in quotes to reflect the number of images you’re using, and you’re all done. You can modfy Wavatars just a bit, or replace them with something totally different.

 


From The Archives:
 

124 thoughts on “Wavatars Process

  1. Jaguar says:

    Very cool. As a graphics programmer at heart, I eat this stuff up.

  2. Joe says:

    Almost makes me want to get back into CS in my free time. Almost ;)

  3. Snook says:

    Nifty, it’s neat to see the guts of how these things are made.

  4. Cadamar says:

    Very nice, Shamus.
    As a Microsoft technologies dev, this almost makes me want to look into PHP. On-the-fly image generation can be a pain. Looks like PHP has some powerful tools for it.
    So, how long do you cache these files on disk? Couldn’t you be opening yourself up to a DOS attack if you don’t manage the files properly? Just a thought.

  5. Cadamar says:

    By the way…
    I love my Wavatar. ;)

  6. Matt` says:

    I’m still experimenting with different things after the + to get different things.. any time I already have something to say I try something different, sooner or later I’ll hit on the ultimate wavatar (then use it forever) :D

  7. Aaron says:

    I’m not a programmer, so many of the things I see online I take for granted (or used to until I started reading this blog!) but seeing this wavatars explanation really puts it in perspective for me. That seems like a lot of steps and so much work to get one made! Kudos to you programmers!

    A

  8. Ian says:

    Cadamar: It’s technically not all done in PHP. PHP includes a module to support the GD library to support dynamic image creation.

    There are .NET bindings available that would let you interface with GD using a .NET language. I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to use it with ASP.NET.

  9. Delta Force Leader says:

    Ok. I have to see what mine looks like.

  10. Delta Force Leader says:

    Cool! :)

  11. BChoinski says:

    I’ve always liked this sort of stuff. Almost makes me wish I had a blog so I could add it myself. :}

  12. BChoinski says:

    Egads!

  13. straechav says:

    Nice one BChoinski, that looks my style… can we make an exchange? :p

  14. straechav says:

    Oh, right, I forgot. Mine looks like a angry drunkard. How stereotypical (I’m finnish).

  15. Phlux says:

    Aaron: You’d be amazed at how deep the PHP rabbit hole goes.

    PHP is an awesome language, especially for beginners. It’s so easy to just borrow a little code from somewhere and manipulate it just slightly to fit your purposes.

    People are usually very put off by “computer programming” because it sounds difficult, but really anybody can learn it. In my opinion, the most difficult part of PHP is the sysadmin part. Tweaking esoteric config files, folder read-write permissions…that stuff is way more complicated for your average newcomer than the actual code is.

  16. scragar says:

    I would have prefared this guide before I went through and recomented your code shamus, but thanks anyway.

    oh, I have another error(although not a massive one), if the image has a size that’s odd then dividing it by to produces a float(to handle the decimal), this causes errors when you attempt to make your fill from the center of the image on images with odd dimentions. the obvious solution is to simply reparse these as integers:
    imagefill($avatar, (int)(AVATAR_SIZE / 2),(int)(AVATAR_SIZE / 2),$bg);

  17. Lukasa says:

    (I apologise in advance for the question if it’s stupid, but sadly I’m not particularly well-versed in server-side languages like PHP)

    Following on from Cadamar’s question above, how are you managing to store these images? Are you storing them on your server? If so, surely that has the potential to run to quite impressive sizes, especially when you include the fact that you also need to store references for which email address the wavatar corresponds to.

    Or have I missed a trick?

  18. Lukasa says:

    NB: I love it that mine is incredibly plain. =P

  19. OM3G4 says:

    so that’s how it’s done, I had an idea it was like that.

  20. Shamus says:

    Cadamar: They remain in the queue forever, although you can dump the cache in the admin panel.

    They are created when needed – when they are first displayed. So, in order to create one, someone has to post a comment. Spam filters and flood filters can keep this from getting out of control.

  21. Shamus says:

    scragar: Thanks for the bug – added to changelist.

  22. Ian says:

    @Phlux: I disagree. I actually find PHP to be painful to use after using just about anything else. It just reeks of poor planning to me, especially with the sheer number of ways to break code simply by changing the configuration file. Let’s not even talk about the extreme pain I went through thanks to PHP’s safe_mode feature on my last web host. That broke 95% of the PHP applications I used in some way.

    I probably wouldn’t be so bitter about it if your average PHP user didn’t act like a zealot. Not saying that you or anyone here does that, but take a look at any blog criticizing any part of PHP and you’ll see what I mean. ;)

  23. Shamus says:

    Lukasa and everyone else who is asking how these are stored:

    Assuming every page on your blog has been viewed since installing wavatars, there will be one icon file for each unique person in the comments.

    On a busy site like mine, this does indeed add up to a lot of files. I currently have ~5,200 in the cache. At 4k each, that comes out to ~20MB. That is indeed a lot, but keep in mind that’s for a three-year old site with massive comment threads. You can dump the cache as often as you like, but keep in mind the icons would be re-created as soon as they were needed again.

    No other info is needed to match the email to the icon, as that is done on the fly.

  24. mookers says:

    Is there a way we can preview our avatars? I have various email addresses but don’t want to spam your comments just to find out which avatar I like best.

  25. mookers says:

    Whoops. Looks like I just did. Sorry :P

  26. Gahaz says:

    Lol!

    “On a busy site like mine, this does indeed add up to a lot of files.”
    -Shamus

    Ha ha, Shamus shame on you, are you going Hollywood on us? I remember when it was aboutthe nerd jokes man, now you just care about pimpin your Wavs. You’ve changed man.

    jokes! ah ha ha!

  27. Pablo says:

    That is very cool. Thanks for sharing that plug-in with the world. Now I just need to convince my server admin to deploy it.

  28. Uninverted says:

    I still stand behind the “It’s magic!” theory.

  29. Shaddy 24 says:

    This is pretty well done. I applaud you.

  30. Amstrad says:

    I don’t particularly care for the Wavatars, but it’s interesting seeing the code behind them.

    I really need to crack down and get back to self-teaching myself PHP.

  31. Rawling says:

    So, what, does this generate an avatar the first time we post and then tie it to our email? Or does it hash the email address and generate an avatar based on this code? When I read “portability” I assumed it would be “based” on the email like this rather than just generated at random and linked.

  32. Shamus says:

    Rawling, and others:

    When you enter your email, it does an md5 hash on it. In simple terms: readable text goes in, gibberish comes out. However, it’s deterministic gibberish.

    You enter your email: [email protected]
    And it churns out a huge string of characters: “0a8b4eeab8249b2038e34f27d67c” and so on. I take this value and chop it off at 17 characters, since that’s all I need.

    That email will ALWAYS produce the same gibberish. When it encounters a post, it gets the hash and looks to see if “0a8b4eeab8249b20.png” exists. If not, it creates it. Each pair of digits defines one of the steps above. Perhaps the “0a” will lead to a blue background while a “3b” would give you yellow. Whatever.

    Sorry if it’s confusing. That’s as clear as I can make it.

  33. Adam says:

    I abandoned PHP and went to .Net because (at least in St. Louis) that’s where the money was at the time.

    PHP sites, on average, are better looking. They have less of a MS cookie-cutter ambiance to them.

  34. Gobo says:

    Damn you Shamus. Now I just have to post to find out what I look like. :D
    Very cool stuff though. Looks very neat too.
    I know that hattrick.org used some similar tactic on their player-images when I was playing that. But they actually layered a bunch of HTML divs and images on top of each other to create the face in the browser instead of storing the final image on the server…

  35. Rawling says:

    Shamus,
    that’s exactly what I expected when you said “portable” in an earlier post. All your talk of “random” choices above confused me!
    Cheers.
    (plus I like mine :-D)

  36. Oh thank you very much. You’ve now gone and forced (yes, showing me something cute like this counts as forcing, I have a very low Will save) me to add “Port Wavatars to Perl” to my exceptionally long TODO list!

    One suggestion I would make is to use the MD5SUM as input data instead of random numbers. That way, if two sites implemented Wavatars, and used the same set of shapes on the backend, then anyone commenting on both sites would get the same Wavatar on each.

  37. … and now I’ve reread a few of the previous comments, I see that is what you are doing.

    Must … not … post … technical … stuff … at … ten … to … midnight … argle.

  38. Downtym says:

    Since my first (real) experience programming was C-style, I find programming languages like PERL, PHP, LISP, BASIC, etc. to be especially jarring if I haven’t used them in a while. The weird thing is that even though I can immediately read the code and understand what it is doing, I get these amazing headaches if I have to transition from Java/C to PHP or back. It’s a little like trying to go back and forth between reading English and Latin. I have this strange physical reaction for a day or two then it goes away while I’m constantly exposed. If I go a week or two without exposure, bang, instant headache when I try to flip back around.

  39. jpetoh says:

    Interesting stuff. And just checking to see what mine looks like.

  40. Inane Fedaykin says:

    Haha, monocle.

  41. Robert says:

    Just wondering what mine looks like…

  42. James Blair says:

    Another “just checking”, I’m afraid. Move along… nothing to read here…

  43. James Blair says:

    Hm… a sleepy-looking stop sign with a unibrow that looks like he’s had too much caffeine… yep, seems about right!

  44. Jim says:

    Test test testy test

  45. Jim says:

    Oh my, mine is so delicious. I’m almost worried that someone may steal it!

  46. Dwaggi says:

    Just like other people, just…erm…testing….

  47. Jessie says:

    Hm. I appear to be some sort of shocked blue triangle.

    :O

    1. Lori says:

      How can I get an Avatar that is like Jessie’s so the images resemble story book characters or cartoons?

  48. Mario says:

    Insert Comment

  49. josh says:

    I guess curiosity has a way of gnawing at you until you check out your wavatar.

    P.S. I like how firefox practically fills in the captcha for me now… :)

  50. Jan says:

    Testing, the xth…

  51. Joe Werner says:

    OK, in order to make this not “just anoher test”, I’ll actually write something:

    Shamus, I like the new layout even if you use boxes… I have so far only looked at the “black text on white background”. I’m also glad that the dice no longer break the comments (they used to start when the dice ended). Now, I’d probably better get back to working…

  52. Scott says:

    People are still testing their wavatars?
    How many more threads will this take up??

  53. Joe Werner says:

    Hmmmm, I’ll use another email address…

  54. Hawkehunt says:

    Many, many more threads

  55. Hawkehunt says:

    hmm…

  56. Ingvar says:

    Shamus, I was wondering what you used to map from email address to input for the selection algorithm. I was half suspecting an MD5 hash of the email, used as a seed for a PRNG, but I must say that simply chopping enough bits out and use that (with, I suspect, using modulus to bring it into raneg for each choice) is more elegant, in its own twisted way.

    I see that the CAPTCHA has been redesigned, the new style is more… printed than the previous rather flowing one.

  57. Roam says:

    Hrm. Some people have actual avatars, as supposed to wavatars. Obviously they are inferior, because wavatars are much cooler.

  58. Relian says:

    This rocks, thank you for the explanation.

  59. Wystan says:

    Just testing a second address.

  60. Thuren says:

    and a third

  61. Ok, I’ve tried. I can’t figure out how users with custom avatars are getting them. Is this something only the admin can add?

    You know what would be cool is an OpenAvatar concept like OpenId where your avatar follows you around wherever you go.

  62. Terrible says:

    What a delightful doohickey.

  63. Ben says:

    @Michael: That’s exactly what those are. They’re called Gravatars. You should be able to sign up at the Gravatar site, but I sadly don’t have the link.

  64. Jérôme says:

    Cool concept!

  65. Jérôme says:

    And I have glasses so it fit perfectly :)

  66. Adam says:

    Well, I think all the “Just Testing” posts are funny…


    darn it can’t remember what mine looks like.. lol

  67. Seracka says:

    I just want to see what mine would be. Sorry about the ‘just testing’ post.

  68. spelley says:

    I love PHP sometimes. The GD library is such a powerful tool for this type of thing.

  69. JohnyMcMuffin says:

    I am curious as to what my avatar is

  70. JohnyMcMuffin says:

    i love my monocle, i gives my posts a sense of class

  71. Davesnot says:

    I have to go disable my gravatars!

  72. Sivi says:

    Hm…interesting. Well, nothing else to contribute, just seeing what my wavatar is.

  73. Marty says:

    Okay, I’m jumping on the bandwagon… what exactly will I look like?

  74. Marty says:

    The next question is:

    Will “Wavatars” influence the “tone” of the post?

    Not how it was written, but how it is read. Do I now read like a disgruntled curmudgeon?

  75. Fred Mischler says:

    Interesting, and probably effective too, to make a comment list more lively. What’s mine look like?

  76. Fred Mischler says:

    Oy, do I have a mean case of the winds . . . . hehehe

    “I will NEVER smile again, Dammit!”

    Why didn’t I get a monocle? Curses!

  77. Fizban says:

    *hops on the testing bandwagon*
    Also, first post on this site, hi all!

  78. Mark says:

    *posting to see mine*

    I have to say, they look very professional for being made in such a simple way (even if the code behind it isnt that simple in the end)

  79. Mark says:

    Oh no, I’m angry, better try another of my emails!

  80. Mark says:

    coooooooooooooool. 8-D

  81. Eric J says:

    I’ve got a Gravatar that I like, so I’ll test my work address.

  82. Mongrel says:

    Just another “What’s my Wavatar” post…

    Move along, nothing to see here

  83. AlienHunter says:

    Sorry, Can’t resist…

  84. Malkara says:

    What’s mine look like?

  85. Annon says:

    My experience with PHP is…mixed. I had tocode some stuff ti access an SQL database for one of my CS classes, and I would have liked to kill the computer. Looked really nice (and felt really great) when it was done, though.

    As for your code–it’s one of those things where my first reaction to it is “why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?” It’s a really great idea that takes very little complexity to code. Good jab.

  86. Annon says:

    And now I have to post again, because my wavatar looks like a wight with a monocle…

  87. Kleedrac says:

    Testing wavatar … must port to perl/python … also possibly a joomla version for my blog ;)

  88. brainsolid says:

    great plugin, but what I must do if I want use only black and white colors? Can you help me, becouse I not so good in php?

  89. Brian says:

    Sorry, a wrong post from my side. Sory!

  90. JayGr says:

    Huh… Thats cool. I should really start trying to teach myself PHP again, I just find learning (any) programming language incredibly boring without an immediate application for it :/

  91. Libq says:

    You should have a Wavatar generator page so people don’t post “trying it out” posts, like this one!

  92. Logan says:

    Can somebody PLEASE set up a web site where we can enter in an email and see what the wavatar would look like? I can’t test mine because I already have a Gravatar account!

  93. Nothing says:

    I just wanted to see what mine looked like.

  94. NB says:

    Wanted to see what my Wavatar looked like.

  95. Sandcat01.00 says:

    0

  96. Sandcat01.00 says:

    IIInterestiing!

  97. Blahzors says:

    Jus’ checkin’ to see what “Wavatar” (sigh) shows up…

  98. boogity says:

    hrrmmm… make me wavatar, you will… like it, i may…

  99. testery says:

    tutus!

  100. testery2 says:

    hooray!

  101. stot says:

    I would like to see my wavatar

  102. stot says:

    what is my wavatar

  103. steved says:

    my wavatar

  104. kim says:

    just checking mine out…:)

  105. Olivia says:

    looking at my wavatar…

  106. Phil says:

    oops, used one with a gravatar, el testo dos…

  107. Josie says:

    I wanna see!

    xo…I love it!

  108. nyi bagelen says:

    looking my gravatar

  109. nyi bagelen says:

    looking my gravatar.?

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