Tessellations

Tessellation is the process of creating a two-dimensional plane using

the repetition of a geometric shape with no overlaps and no gaps.

In Latin, tessella is a small cubical piece of clay, stone or glass used to

make mosaics. The word "tessella" means "small square" (from "tessera",
square, which in its turn is from the Greek word for "four"). It corresponds
with the everyday term tiling which refers to applications of tessellations,
often made of glazed clay. Examples of tessellations in the real world include
honeycombs and pavement tilings

In the subject of computer graphics, tessellation techniques are

often used to manage datasets of polygons and divide them into suitable
structures for rendering. Normally, at least for real-time rendering, the data
is tessellated into triangles, which is sometimes referred to as
triangulation.

Regular Tessellations
A regular tessellation is a highly symmetric tessellation made up
of congruent regular polygons. Only three regular tessellations exist: those
made up of equilateral triangles, squares, or hexagons.

Triangles
3.3.3.3.3.3

Squares

Hexagons

4. 4. 4. 4

6. 6. 6

For a regular tessellation, the pattern is identical at each

vertex!

Semi regular Tessellations

A semi-regular tessellation uses a variety of regular polygons, of which there
are eight. The arrangement of polygons at every vertex point is identical.
An edge-to-edge tessellation is even less regular: the only requirement is
that adjacent tiles only share full sides, i.e., no tile shares a partial side with
any other tile.

3.3.3.3.6

3.3.3.4.4

3.3.4.3.4

4.6.12

4.8.8

3.12.12

3.4.6.4

3.6.3.6

Other Tessellations
There are also "Demiregular" tessellations, but mathematicians disagree on
what they actually are!

And some people allow curved shapes (not just polygons) so you can have
tessellations like these: