[HN Gopher] Show HN: Play with Shaders Inspired by Slime Mold
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Show HN: Play with Shaders Inspired by Slime Mold
        
       Author : Yenrabbit
       Score  : 62 points
       Date   : 2021-03-29 10:55 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (observablehq.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (observablehq.com)
        
       | coldcode wrote:
       | Does not seem to work in Safari on Big Sur, all I see is js
       | errors where the animations should be.
        
         | selfsimilar wrote:
         | Same in Safari in iOS.
         | 
         | `viewof gl = TypeError: null is not an object (evaluating
         | 'gl.viewport')`
        
           | nigerian1981 wrote:
           | I tried turning on WebGL and WebGPU in the Safari settings,
           | but it just shows a black box on my iPhone 11
        
         | pineconewarrior wrote:
         | Safari is a bit behind on javascript and animations. I'm
         | excited for the current Safari preview to become mainstream.
        
         | SketchySeaBeast wrote:
         | Doesn't work in Firefox either, including the dev edition which
         | is usually more up to date:
         | 
         | "viewof gl = TypeError: can't access property "viewport", gl is
         | null"
         | 
         | It does work in the new Edge and Chrome. Doesn't load at all in
         | IE, but I take that as a good thing.
        
           | burkaman wrote:
           | No problem for me in Firefox Nightly 89.0a1.
        
             | SketchySeaBeast wrote:
             | Hmmm... my work laptop can't run it with Firefox (regular,
             | dev edition, or nightly), but my home PC can on regular
             | Firefox. And it does run on my work laptop in Chrome.
             | Curious.
        
       | theossuary wrote:
       | This reminds me of a coding adventure YT video that replicates
       | slime molds in Unity, look at the end to see some high res videos
       | of it - https://youtu.be/X-iSQQgOd1A
        
         | arnado wrote:
         | The article credits that video directly for inspiration.
        
           | theossuary wrote:
           | Whoops, didn't see that. I thought it was a little peculiar
           | that there were two things about simulating mold in a week in
           | my feeds; but I just chalked it up to frequency bias. Now I'm
           | wondering if all the 3d printed cycloidal drive stuff I've
           | been seeing is more than just coincidence...
        
             | Yenrabbit wrote:
             | I wonder if previous 'Coding Adventures' videos have
             | prompted similar 'coincidences' with people wondering why
             | they are suddenly seeing procedural planets popping up all
             | over the place :)
        
         | jedimastert wrote:
         | Coding Aventure is one of my favorite intellectual(?)
         | exploration channels, along with Primer, who's had a great
         | string of genetic/evolution simulation videos exploring the
         | emergent evolution of society
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goePYJ74Ydg
        
       | marshmallow_12 wrote:
       | here's something else interesting about slime mould
       | https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/slime-mou...
        
       | arc-in-space wrote:
       | I'm guessing there's no collisions from the original paper in
       | this implementation?
       | 
       | Edit: also, are boundaries being blurred properly with wrapping
       | enabled? It seems to create rectangular patterns(it could just be
       | because of the initial conditions though).
        
         | Yenrabbit wrote:
         | I'll be honest I found the paper AFTER finishing the project -
         | my implementation was based on the rough description in the
         | video :) Collisions would be very hard to implement, but I will
         | definitely take a look at the blurring - at the moment it
         | doesn't wrap around.
        
       | spuz wrote:
       | This is super interesting. I've actually been looking for a way
       | to render 100,000s of points in an animation similar to these so
       | I will definitely take a look at using shaders now.
        
         | Yenrabbit wrote:
         | Great - good luck!
        
       | galangalalgol wrote:
       | In green slime I saw a central ring that seemed to be reinforcing
       | itself. It stayed circular for ages. And then equidistant
       | parallel lines along each side.
        
       | Yenrabbit wrote:
       | Author here, happy to answer any questions about the
       | implementation. I'd also love to see any interesting patterns you
       | find :)
        
         | natemcintosh wrote:
         | Like you, I also loved Sebastian Lague's video on slime mold.
         | Would you suggest starting on a CPU based version if I have no
         | knowledge of shaders?
        
           | mindv0rtex wrote:
           | That's what I did when I recently came across the same model.
           | Here's my CPU-based implementation (in Rust):
           | https://github.com/mindv0rtex/physarum
        
           | Yenrabbit wrote:
           | You can get some fun patterns even at much smaller scale, so
           | a CPU-based approach should be entertaining enough. That
           | said, I had no knowledge of shaders either before this
           | project! I'm johnowhitaker on twitter or email - happy to
           | chat if you want to talk specifics.
        
       | mushishi wrote:
       | Somewhat related, here's an interesting video about the behavior
       | of Slime Mold:
       | 
       | Nova - Se47 - Ep10 - Secret Mind of Slime
       | https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7z6ycz
       | 
       | (Someone shared it here on another post.)
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-03-30 23:02 UTC)