On 12/19/2010 1:37 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> On 12/18/2010 8:00 PM, stbenge wrote:
>>> Frankly, I am no where near good enough to even guess how to do that.
>>> lol
>>
>> Sometimes exploration will let you stumble across a structure you had
>> intended. Other times, you need a system suited for what you are doing.
>> For instance, cellular automata can be "grown" from a substrate, and
>> bounds can be made for it, but the end result is still something
>> unintended. Fairly recently someone invented a snowflake generator which
>> produces what appears to be physically-accurate results. Really cool,
>> but it takes days to grow the things :(
>>
>> Sam
>
> Well, I meant in the specific sense of being able to "find" a way to
> constrain it. Someone needs to come up with something like, I don't
> know, a biologic constraint type thing, which can kind of "switch off"
> growth, in a way that would still produce the fractal result, but not
> necessarily something like looking for a specific shape in Mandelbrot,
> but getting not just *that* shape, but the whole rest of the things you
> didn't want too, or something.. Like I said, I know what you would need
> to make it more predictable in terms of size, or even shape (like you
> might get in some cases where the form is part of an object, but only
> applies to say, a leg, or something), but actually having a clue how you
> manage that is way beyond me.

You want controlled unpredictability... something organically grown, but 
unexpected? Things like the Mandelbrot fractal aren't 'grown', but the 
result of a complex number squared and iterated... They can be 
constrained, but not without global consequences... Kaleidoscopic IFSs 
are sort of grown, but not really... Maybe you need L-Systems? Or 
perhaps something involving genetic evolution with fractal qualities? 
Perhaps if you can define your problem to a finer degree, I can help 
point the way to what you want...

There are Framsticks, and there is Spore, and there are plenty of 
L-Systems out there with genetic evolutionary properties...

Sam

Post a reply to this message