Tessellation Composer (Advanced)

The Tessellation Composer is the most feature-dense node in the orion4d/illusion_node pack - the "(Advanced)" in the name isn't marketing. You feed it one image, and it tiles that image across a grid with per-tile flipping, rotation, scaling, staggering, and even a diamond brick layout. Where the Checkerboard Composer alternates two fixed images, this one is a full transformation toy for a single tile. It's the node you use when you want a mosaic, a half-drop textile pattern, or the start of an Escher-ish repeat.

How it works

The input image is resized to tile_width × tile_height with Lanczos, then pasted across a tiles_x by tiles_y grid. Each tile can then be transformed independently:

• mode - repeat (straight grid), mirror (alternate rows shift so tiles nest like a brick wall), and diamond (rows are staggered by half a tile width, giving the classic brick/offset layout). The diamond mode is the standout - you can't fake that stagger with a plain tile node.
• mirror_axis - none, x, y, xy, or random: flips alternate tiles to create seamless mirror tiling, which is the standard trick for hiding seams.
• rotation_mode / scale_mode - none, by_tile, or random, applied around rotation_angle and scale_factor. Random mode pulls from random_seed.
• offset_x / offset_y - shift applied to alternating rows/columns, for half-drop layouts.
• opacity (default 1, down to 0.1) - fades the composited tiles via the alpha channel.

Under the hood it's Pillow compositing on an RGBA canvas, so everything is CPU, instant, and model-free.

The inputs that matter

For a beginner, honestly, only four of these matter on day one:

• input_image - the tile source.
• mode (repeat / mirror / diamond) - the layout.
• tiles_x / tiles_y (default 4 each, range 1–32) - how many across and down.
• tile_width / tile_height (default 128, range 8–2048).

Everything else - mirror axis, offsets, rotation, scale, opacity - is the spice you add once the basic grid works. One IMAGE output.

Install

Part of orion4d/illusion_node, "ComfyUI Illusion & Pattern Nodes", under the "illusion" category. Grab it via ComfyUI Manager (search "Illusion") or:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/orion4d/illusion_node.git

Restart ComfyUI. The pack depends only on numpy, torch, and Pillow - already in a stock ComfyUI - so no model downloads and no dependency-hell detours.

Common issues

The biggest surprise is output size: tiles_x * tile_width by tiles_y * tile_height, and with offsets the actual bounds can exceed that, so a big grid gets big fast. Keep tiles small and count your grid before you run. Second, opacity below 1 composites tiles over a transparent base, so if you're saving to a format that drops alpha you'll get hard black where nothing was painted - composite onto a background yourself if you need a solid result. And diamond mode staggers rows, which means your columns no longer line up; if the layout looks "wrong," that's the feature, not a bug. Start with repeat, then graduate to mirror_axis, then play with diamond once you know what you're doing.