Most websites offer only superficial or inconsistent descriptions of camouflage patterns, making it difficult to discuss or compare them in detail. This project aims to develop a more robust and nuanced language for describing the wide range of military camouflage variations. It remains a work in progress, and feedback is welcome as we refine this approach.
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Definitions
A sharp-edged shape is any region in a camouflage pattern that has a distinctly defined boundary and a uniform color. The color transition between this shape and adjacent shapes is abrupt—much like a clean line you could trace or “cut out” with a razor blade.
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A soft-edged shape is any region in a camouflage pattern that has a more gradual or ambiguous boundary. Such shapes typically arise from techniques like blending, brushstrokes, or fine-scale pixelation, causing the color transition to appear fuzzy or gradual rather than sharply defined.
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Most camouflage patterns rely on sharp-edged shapes. A notable exception is A-TACS, which features blended, soft edges. Of course, there’s a spectrum: some patterns include speckled or streaked boundaries that still qualify as essentially sharp. Examples include the UK’s Disruptive Pattern Material (DPM), East Germany’s Flächentarn , and Leibermuster/TAZ 83.
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The Operational Camouflage Pattern (OCP) is a good example of how a single pattern can combine both sharp-edged and soft-edged elements. At first glance, OCP appears to have distinct, sharp-edged shapes in green, brown, and tan. Closer inspection, however, reveals that some of these shapes contain soft transitions within them—particularly within the green regions. For instance, a seemingly solid green shape may actually blend from a lighter to a darker green, creating a subtler, more gradual transition than the bold, external outline suggests. This “hybrid” design approach helps OCP function effectively at multiple engagement distances. From afar, the bold shapes break up the wearer’s silhouette, while up close, the internal blending makes the color transitions less stark, further disrupting identification of the figure.​
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When discussing sharp-edged shapes, we can also examine their external boundaries. A boundary can be convex, typically suggesting a shape with rounded or elliptical edges—imagine a blob or oval that smoothly encompasses its interior. Many older camouflage designs used comparatively large, sweeping forms that, while not perfectly elliptical, still tended toward convex outlines. By contrast, irregular boundaries incorporate more complex contours. These may have notches, spurs, or jagged edges that deviate dramatically from a simple curved form. Irregular shapes can be beneficial for concealment because they mimic the unpredictable textures of natural environments (like foliage, bark, or stones). Whether convex or highly irregular, both approaches aim to break up the human outline; the difference lies in how “smooth” or “complex” those outlines appear.
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Another way to categorize shapes within a camouflage pattern is by whether they are uniform (orientation-neutral) or directional. A uniform shape is one whose orientation doesn’t matter—if you rotate it or flip it, it looks essentially the same. Many blotchy or amoeba-like shapes fall into this category: since there’s no repeating stripe or angle, the shape won’t appear “upside-down” or “sideways.”
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In contrast, a directional shape or pattern displays a clear orientation. One of the most iconic examples is the Tigerstripe pattern, which features angled stripes generally running horizontally when worn. If rotated, these stripes can look “wrong” or out of place, because the overall camouflage relies on that striped alignment. Although most modern camouflage is designed to be omni-directional (so the uniform remains effective no matter how it’s cut and sewn), some contemporary designs still include a mild directional aspect—especially if they mimic natural textures like reeds or bark that run vertically in the field.
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Directional or omni-directional
Certain camouflage designs, such as Tigerstripe, are clearly directional—when worn upright, the stripes are meant to run horizontally from left to right. In contrast, most camouflage patterns are effectively omni-directional; the way the fabric is oriented before cutting and sewing has little real impact on their performance. Although CADPAT may appear directional (due to a standard printed alignment), this is mostly an aesthetic choice rather than a tactical one. Swiss TAZ 83 is only marginally directional: its downward “bleeding” might look odd if rotated, but in practical terms, reversing the pattern does little more than offend the fashion police.
Other directional camouflages include the French “Lizard” (TAP47 and Derivatives) with angular brushstrokes that form diagonal or slightly angled bands mimic horizontal stripes when worn correctly. If rotated, the pattern’s stripes no longer align in the intended horizontal plane, making it look off. Similarly, Rhodesian Brushstroke has sweeping, hand-painted shapes with broad, curved brushstroke motifs typically oriented diagonally or horizontally. The pattern loses some of its natural, flowing feel if flipped or rotated, since those strokes are designed to run in a specific direction. Finally, the East German “Strichmuster” (Rain Pattern) contains vertical “raindrop” streaks; fine, parallel lines that resemble rainfall. The vertical orientation helps blend with upright vegetation and terrain features; turning it sideways diminishes that effect.
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​Monolayered or multilayered
Many military patterns have all shapes at approximately the same resolution and style, such as the woodland camouflage, many of the digital camouflages such as AOR-1 and -2, CADPAD, MARPAT, flecktarn, etc.
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Sharp shapes, blended shapes or blends
The lines that separate one color from another may be dominant and sharp, such as in the woodland camouflage, or there an attempt to blend one color into another. Sharp lines will make a camouflaged pattern more conspicuous than blended, for apart from the edges of leaves, the edges of tree trunks and branches, sharp lines between colors
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Convex versus concave shapes
A shape is concave if given any two points in the shape, all points on the line between appear within the shape, and irregular otherwise. Almost no patterns are strictly convex, but the Polish Puma is very close.
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Geometric sharp edges or organic sharp edges
Sharp edges may be further distinguished into shapes that have generally straight lines versus others that are generally curved. The U.S. Woodland pattern is organic, while the Swedish M90 pattern is geometric.
There are two possible techniques for blending colors. The first is to have an actual and gradual change in the hue or saturation in the pigment; this is generally more expensive, and is therefore often limited to commercially available camouflages. This is seen in the various layers of the Operation Camouflage Pattern (both the base layer bends tan and brown but the upper lays occasionally blend light and dark green) but also in the A-TACS camouflage. The second is to have finer detail along the edges. This is achieved with digital camouflage and the older
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Monotonic base
Some camouflage patterns have a clear base color upon which patterns are placed. This is visible in Frog Skin camouflage, which has a light green monotonic base; the Australian Disruptive Pattern, which has a monotonic tan base, and to a lesser extent, the original Tigerstripe camouflages.
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Overprints
A camouflage may contain overprints that are distinguishable from a base camouflage where these overprints do not follow any pattern appearin in the base. Technically, all camouflages with a monotonic base have the additional patterns appearing as overprints, but there are others. For example, the six-color chocolate chip Desert Battle Dress has a four-color base camouflage over which there appear black-and-white chocolate chips, or imitation stones. The Operation Camouflage Pattern has a blended base that varies between shades of tan and brown. It is above this that overprints of even lighter tan and darker brown as well as light and dark green are printed.
Large spectrum or narrow spectrum
For environments that are naturally multicolored, such as forests and brush, it makes sense to include a broad range of colors in both hue, saturation and intensity; however, in environments that are more monotonous, a smaller range of hues and
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This author does not appreciate any desert or winter camouflage that has a large spectrum, even within the constraints. For example,
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The UK Multi-terrain pattern may be described as two-layered. The base layer has three-color (green-brown-olive) irregular organic non-directional patterns with generally sharp boundaries but including speckling and blending. The top layer are smaller white and black irregular patterns with generally sharp boundaries but including speckling.
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The US Woodland pattern may be described as two-layered. The base layer has three-color (green-brown-tan) irregular organic non-directional patterns with sharp boundaries. The top layer includes irregular elongated organic non-directional black patterns with sharp boundaries.
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Note, it may be argued that the US Woodland pattern is single layered; however, the black patterns tend to occupy less area than the other three colors, and in general it is easy to transpose and rotate the black patterns without adversely affecting the effectiveness of the pattern.
The East German 1968 Strichmuster has a monotonic tan base layer and an ornamental layer of directional brown lines.
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The Swedish M90 pattern may be described as single layered with a four-color (tan, light green, dark green and black) approximately convex geometric non-directional patterns with sharp boundaries.
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Observe that in designing a new camouflage, one could easily take one layer from one pattern and combine it with a layer of another.
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