[HN Gopher] Show HN: Simulate 3D Plants in the Browser
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       Show HN: Simulate 3D Plants in the Browser
        
       Author : jimfx
       Score  : 261 points
       Date   : 2023-12-03 10:55 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (plant.max-richter.dev)
 (TXT) w3m dump (plant.max-richter.dev)
        
       | drumttocs8 wrote:
       | Very cool!
        
       | hx2a wrote:
       | This is a neat project but it doesn't seem to render the plant at
       | the moment. It did render plants 20 minutes ago - perhaps the HN
       | load has hurt it?
       | 
       | All of the code is available online, with great documentation.
       | There is, in fact, a server back end for this project:
       | 
       | https://github.com/jim-fx/plantarium/tree/main
       | https://github.com/jim-fx/plantarium/blob/main/ARCHITECTURE....
       | 
       | I will be back in a few days when it is working again.
        
         | djsavvy wrote:
         | It's back up
        
       | fb03 wrote:
       | Wow. Sending this to a bunch of tech art friends
        
       | MrLeap wrote:
       | This is so useful and nice for so many reasons.
       | 
       | A well written browser based node graph editor that can create
       | procedural 3d meshes _and_ export as .obj _and_ you've
       | permissively licensed it. This could be the seed for a whole host
       | of procedural tools. Thank you Jim.
        
       | catapart wrote:
       | Amazing! I love how immediate, and straightforward it is. Easy to
       | understand and fun to play around with!
        
       | spacecadet wrote:
       | Super cool! Ive been building some 2D simulations using Pygame
       | lately, so enjoy a good simulation project!
        
       | phito wrote:
       | That is extremely cool! I like the stem 'thiccness' parameter :)
        
       | Tiberium wrote:
       | Looks very nice, one small problem - when I change the values,
       | the camera seems to "shake" because the shape of the plant
       | changes, so it has to constantly readjust, and it's kind of
       | annoying (at least for me). Maybe it could be possible to freeze
       | the camera while the parameters are being changed?
        
         | andrewflnr wrote:
         | Probably best to animate the camera change afterward when it
         | relaxes, too...
        
       | NelsonMinar wrote:
       | I'm impressed with the complexity here. For folks wanting to take
       | it for a quick spin... The tutorial is great but takes a few
       | minutes to get to the fun. Instead just play with the sliders in
       | the right pane and see how it modifies the fern. Also click
       | library and load some other models to see what it can do.
       | 
       | You can tell this is brand new because there are no penises to
       | load in the user submitted models yet.
        
       | seism wrote:
       | Fantastic. I can't wait to see a whole forest of crowdsourced
       | algorithmic plants. Is this connected to any scientific projects?
       | A cool feature would be an AI botanist that tells you how likely
       | your plant would survive, what's the closest taxonomic reference,
       | a nice recipe to go along with boiled rice,...
        
       | ninju wrote:
       | For those that did not know (like myself), you can slide the
       | right hand panel to expose more parameters/controls
        
       | owenpalmer wrote:
       | The model visualizer is beautifully nostalgic... somehow.
        
         | owenpalmer wrote:
         | Reminds me of games from my childhood :)
        
       | ur-whale wrote:
       | The graph editor is really, really well done, congrats.
        
       | uoaei wrote:
       | What makes this a simulation and not just a model?
        
         | Daub wrote:
         | I guess because it is procedurally based, likely using an
         | L-system.
         | 
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-system
         | 
         | We use things like this in 3D art and animation. For example
         | the paint system in Maya. This was used to create the forests
         | in Shrek.
         | 
         | Question to OP... have you considered making this available as
         | a Blender plugin?
        
       | eternityforest wrote:
       | That is amazing, they really look like plants!
        
       | i_am_a_peasant wrote:
       | As far as I can tell this uses WebGL, I wonder if you could get
       | these results just as easily using WebGPU
        
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       (page generated 2023-12-03 23:00 UTC)