Isometric cube and tumbling blocks pattern generator

A flat pattern that looks three-dimensional. Fill the plane with isometric cubes, each made of three rhombi in three shades, let them all stand the same way or tumble at random, and export a seamless pattern as SVG, PNG or CSS.

Open in the generator How it works

Isometric cubes in pink, yellow and cyan

Cubes from rhombi

Look at a cube from a corner and you see three faces: the top and two sides. Draw each face as a rhombus in its own shade and the hexagonal outline fills the plane without gaps. This arrangement, known to quilters as tumbling blocks or baby blocks, is also an old floor-tile pattern.

It is a classic optical illusion. The same rhombi can be read as cubes standing on the floor or as the inside corners of a room, and the picture flips between the two as you look at it. When the three shades inside neighboring cubes are turned, the cubes seem to tumble, and a regular rotation gives steps and staircases that go up or down depending on how you read them.

How the generator builds them

Ornamatic lays the cubes on a hexagonal grid. In every hexagon the three rhombi get your three colors, and the arrangement picks which color goes on the top face. With Blocks, every cube is the same. With Random, each cube is turned at random inside a repeating block of the size you choose. With Stairs, the turn follows a regular cycle across the grid.

A joint of your chosen width separates the faces, and the background shows through it. All the arrangements repeat exactly, so the tile is seamless.

What you can adjust

Cubes — blocks, random or stairs.
Cubes per period — for the random arrangement, the size of the repeating block.
Joint — the width of the gap between the faces.
Shuffle — a new random arrangement.
Colors — three colors for the three faces; any palette.