What are superellipses?

A superellipse is like a stretched or squashed rectangle that can look like a circle, an oval, or something in between, depending on how you stretch it.

Imagine you have a round cookie cutter, and then you press it into a sponge cake. That’s a circle. Now imagine you take the same cookie cutter and squeeze it from the sides, it becomes more like an oval. If you keep squeezing it harder, it looks almost like a rectangle. A superellipse is like that squeezed cookie cutter, it can be anywhere in between those shapes.

A normal ellipse (like the oval shape) has two different "stretch" values, one for width and one for height. But a superellipse uses just one stretch value, making it more flexible and easier to draw on paper or even code into a game!

Think of it like a squishy eraser that can be made round, oval, or almost square, all with the same tool.

Superellipses are used in real life too! They appear in logos, buildings, and even computer graphics. Like how a circle is perfect for wheels, a superellipse gives designers more creative freedom, just like having different cookie cutters to make all sorts of fun shapes.