4 ms·

Algorithms for making interesting organic simulations

139 points by todsacerdoti 1y ago

alhirzel 1y ago
Reminds me of Electric Sheep https://electricsheep.org/ https://electricsheep.org/
smusamashah 1y ago
The 36 Points linked in the article is very fascinating https://www.sagejenson.com/36points/#22_transmission_tower https://www.sagejenson.com/36points/#22_transmission_tower Press numbers and letters on this page to switch to one of the variations.
- ethan_smith 1y ago
  The 36 Points is part of Sage Jenson's visualization of Jeff Jones' "Artificial Nature" research, which pioneered many of these reaction-diffusion and agent-based models for simulating emergent biological phenomena.
jasonjmcghee 1y ago
Absolutely beautiful visualizations. These are way beyond anything I've done, but you can actually do these with compute shaders in real time and they look quite good. I played with using Godot to do this kind of slime simulation (inspired by Sebastian Lague) when they released compute shaders: https://github.com/jasonjmcghee/compute-shaders?tab=readme-ov-file#slime https://github.com/jasonjmcghee/compute-shaders?tab=readme-o.... Edit: Here's a good webgpu demo (not by me) of this kind of simulation https://shridhar2602.github.io/WebGPU-Slime-Simulation/ https://shridhar2602.github.io/WebGPU-Slime-Simulation/
romulobribeiro 1y ago
This is something that Daniel Shiffman from coding train would consider for the coding challenges
johannes_ne 1y ago
The same author has a great series of tutorials for making looping animations, where the animation appears longer than the length of the loop. It also introduces Perlin noise, which I've found quite useful in a few unrelated projects. https://bleuje.com/tutorials/ https://bleuje.com/tutorials/ Here is an example of a 10-minute movie in a 6.3-second looping GIF. https://bsky.app/profile/johsenevoldsen.bsky.social/post/3lmca7h3rgs2h https://bsky.app/profile/johsenevoldsen.bsky.social/post/3lm...
FacelessJim 1y ago
I did something very similar some years ago while learning metal [1], I recall them being called "boids". I spent days just playing with the various parameters, luckily my implementation was not as pretty as the one offered in the OP, otherwise I would have lost weeks instead. [1] https://github.com/ghyatzo/metalplay?tab=readme-ov-file https://github.com/ghyatzo/metalplay?tab=readme-ov-file
- _0ffh 1y ago
  The original boids, or "bird-oid objects", was an algorithm and program to simulate emergent flocking behaviour from simple rules in birds. It has spawned a kind of genre, or at least a multitude of copies/derivatives, often collectively referred to as "boids".
- stirfish 1y ago
  I've been vibe coding boids implementations because my toddler likes to look at them. Here's one where the attributes of the boids (alignment, etc) are hooked up to frequency generators like a sequencer: https://neuroky.me/boidsine.html?boidCount=1700&hue=sine3&separation=sine4&boidScale=2.1&s3f=2.0 https://neuroky.me/boidsine.html?boidCount=1700&hue=sine3&se... I can move them to GitHub or something, but they are currently hosted in my pantry. Please be gentle :)
Ono-Sendai 1y ago
Very nice. It seems some of the algorithms are (inadvertently?) solving the shallow water equations. Looks similar to the results I was getting working on https://github.com/Ono-Sendai/terraingen https://github.com/Ono-Sendai/terraingen
mif 1y ago
Reminds me of the Gray-Scott explorer [0], implemented with WebGL (in 2012!!). Mathematics is beautiful! [0] https://www.mrob.com/pub/comp/xmorphia/ogl/index.html https://www.mrob.com/pub/comp/xmorphia/ogl/index.html

139 points by todsacerdoti 1y ago

Reminds me of Electric Sheep https://electricsheep.org/ https://electricsheep.org/

The 36 Points linked in the article is very fascinating https://www.sagejenson.com/36points/#22_transmission_tower https://www.sagejenson.com/36points/#22_transmission_tower Press numbers and letters on this page to switch to one of the variations.

ethan_smith 1y ago
The 36 Points is part of Sage Jenson's visualization of Jeff Jones' "Artificial Nature" research, which pioneered many of these reaction-diffusion and agent-based models for simulating emergent biological phenomena.

jasonjmcghee 1y ago

Absolutely beautiful visualizations. These are way beyond anything I've done, but you can actually do these with compute shaders in real time and they look quite good. I played with using Godot to do this kind of slime simulation (inspired by Sebastian Lague) when they released compute shaders: https://github.com/jasonjmcghee/compute-shaders?tab=readme-ov-file#slime https://github.com/jasonjmcghee/compute-shaders?tab=readme-o.... Edit: Here's a good webgpu demo (not by me) of this kind of simulation https://shridhar2602.github.io/WebGPU-Slime-Simulation/ https://shridhar2602.github.io/WebGPU-Slime-Simulation/

romulobribeiro 1y ago

This is something that Daniel Shiffman from coding train would consider for the coding challenges

johannes_ne 1y ago

The same author has a great series of tutorials for making looping animations, where the animation appears longer than the length of the loop. It also introduces Perlin noise, which I've found quite useful in a few unrelated projects. https://bleuje.com/tutorials/ https://bleuje.com/tutorials/ Here is an example of a 10-minute movie in a 6.3-second looping GIF. https://bsky.app/profile/johsenevoldsen.bsky.social/post/3lmca7h3rgs2h https://bsky.app/profile/johsenevoldsen.bsky.social/post/3lm...

FacelessJim 1y ago

I did something very similar some years ago while learning metal [1], I recall them being called "boids". I spent days just playing with the various parameters, luckily my implementation was not as pretty as the one offered in the OP, otherwise I would have lost weeks instead. [1] https://github.com/ghyatzo/metalplay?tab=readme-ov-file https://github.com/ghyatzo/metalplay?tab=readme-ov-file

_0ffh 1y ago
The original boids, or "bird-oid objects", was an algorithm and program to simulate emergent flocking behaviour from simple rules in birds. It has spawned a kind of genre, or at least a multitude of copies/derivatives, often collectively referred to as "boids".
stirfish 1y ago
I've been vibe coding boids implementations because my toddler likes to look at them. Here's one where the attributes of the boids (alignment, etc) are hooked up to frequency generators like a sequencer: https://neuroky.me/boidsine.html?boidCount=1700&hue=sine3&separation=sine4&boidScale=2.1&s3f=2.0 https://neuroky.me/boidsine.html?boidCount=1700&hue=sine3&se... I can move them to GitHub or something, but they are currently hosted in my pantry. Please be gentle :)

Ono-Sendai 1y ago

Very nice. It seems some of the algorithms are (inadvertently?) solving the shallow water equations. Looks similar to the results I was getting working on https://github.com/Ono-Sendai/terraingen https://github.com/Ono-Sendai/terraingen

mif 1y ago

Reminds me of the Gray-Scott explorer [0], implemented with WebGL (in 2012!!). Mathematics is beautiful! [0] https://www.mrob.com/pub/comp/xmorphia/ogl/index.html https://www.mrob.com/pub/comp/xmorphia/ogl/index.html