A flower nobody drew

Not one stroke of this rose was drawn, and there is no image file anywhere in it. It is a single spiral climbing inward and upward around the flower's axis, its edge rising and falling, sweeping out a surface — with forty thousand points scattered over it. Which way each point faces, and how bright it should be, are calculated too. "Blooming" is not an animation: it is that spiral being revealed in order. Drag to look from another angle.

The curl number is how quickly the petals lie flat as they go outward: turn it down and the rose closes into a bud; turn it up and it opens out like a dahlia. Those are not three presets — it is one number in one set of equations, and every position in between is computed just as honestly. Push it across slowly and watch where the change happens.