An homage to the incredible diversity of nature. I did a precursor to these butterflies (vlinder, in Dutch) all the way back in 2016. Google 'butterfly effect shadertoy' to see it.

The entire thing is procedurally generated in a shader that has about 500 lines of code.

There is A LOT of variety in them: wing shape, pattern, body shape, antennae, colors, as well as some very rare traits that will only come out with a large enough number of editions. A bunch of them can look kind of bland, but every once in a while you get a real beauty! To save an image, just right-click -> 'save as image'

I hope that down the line it will be possible to 'mate' two vlinders and then generate new 'offspring' vlinders that are a mix of their parents. Someone made a shadertoy that does exactly that with my original 2016 effect and its super cool. So, fxhash, if you are reading this... ;)