How to generate n different colors for any natural number n?

Question

Say n = 100; How do I generate 100 visually distinct colors? Is this mathematically possible?

Answer 1

Yeah. Defining distinct is a product of deferring to a color space then when we say maximally distinct colors what we mean to say is colors which are as far from all the other colors as possible. But since the color space doesn't change the answer isn't going to change. And implementing something that better fits with human eyes and how human eyes see color like CIE-lab de2000 color distance makes redoing all the calculations hard, but makes a static list easy. Here's 128 entries.

private static final String[] indexcolors = new String[]{
        "#000000", "#FFFF00", "#1CE6FF", "#FF34FF", "#FF4A46", "#008941", "#006FA6", "#A30059",
        "#FFDBE5", "#7A4900", "#0000A6", "#63FFAC", "#B79762", "#004D43", "#8FB0FF", "#997D87",
        "#5A0007", "#809693", "#FEFFE6", "#1B4400", "#4FC601", "#3B5DFF", "#4A3B53", "#FF2F80",
        "#61615A", "#BA0900", "#6B7900", "#00C2A0", "#FFAA92", "#FF90C9", "#B903AA", "#D16100",
        "#DDEFFF", "#000035", "#7B4F4B", "#A1C299", "#300018", "#0AA6D8", "#013349", "#00846F",
        "#372101", "#FFB500", "#C2FFED", "#A079BF", "#CC0744", "#C0B9B2", "#C2FF99", "#001E09",
        "#00489C", "#6F0062", "#0CBD66", "#EEC3FF", "#456D75", "#B77B68", "#7A87A1", "#788D66",
        "#885578", "#FAD09F", "#FF8A9A", "#D157A0", "#BEC459", "#456648", "#0086ED", "#886F4C",

        "#34362D", "#B4A8BD", "#00A6AA", "#452C2C", "#636375", "#A3C8C9", "#FF913F", "#938A81",
        "#575329", "#00FECF", "#B05B6F", "#8CD0FF", "#3B9700", "#04F757", "#C8A1A1", "#1E6E00",
        "#7900D7", "#A77500", "#6367A9", "#A05837", "#6B002C", "#772600", "#D790FF", "#9B9700",
        "#549E79", "#FFF69F", "#201625", "#72418F", "#BC23FF", "#99ADC0", "#3A2465", "#922329",
        "#5B4534", "#FDE8DC", "#404E55", "#0089A3", "#CB7E98", "#A4E804", "#324E72", "#6A3A4C",
        "#83AB58", "#001C1E", "#D1F7CE", "#004B28", "#C8D0F6", "#A3A489", "#806C66", "#222800",
        "#BF5650", "#E83000", "#66796D", "#DA007C", "#FF1A59", "#8ADBB4", "#1E0200", "#5B4E51",
        "#C895C5", "#320033", "#FF6832", "#66E1D3", "#CFCDAC", "#D0AC94", "#7ED379", "#012C58"
};

Here's the first 256 as an image.

(left-to-right) (top-to-bottom). You might be able to get a few more distinct colors if you made sure each color was as equidistant as possible within the colorspace. That lookup table picks each additional color as maximally distinct from all previous colors rather than designating the N at the start and then mapping out the colorspace. So yeah, brute force and a high level color dsitance algorithm and you're set to make this same set of colors yourself. Over the course of a day or so.