Emergent Form
Self-directed studies in procedural and natural form — growth, geomorphology, and learned behavior. Case studies open a dedicated page; sketches live on a board below.
Coral WispA growth solver in Houdini that builds coral-like structures with per-zone control over form and density. PDG orchestrated the variation pipeline — over 200 unique pieces, each ~5M polygons, fed through layout and shading. A study in how morphological diversity emerges from a single ruleset.Houdini · PDG · Procedural growthread →NCA EcologyOngoing research: tiny physics-inspired neural cellular automata trained as competing species on a shared grid. Each species is an ~8K-parameter update rule shaped by a structural loss — physics is what the kernel is asked to preserve. A study in how ecosystem-level behavior emerges from minimal local rules.NCA · PyTorch · Research · WIPread →Meandering riverA Houdini simulation in which a single curve develops into a meandering river over many frames. Each frame a curvature signal pushes the channel sideways; oxbow lakes appear when a shortest-path step through a graph of nearby segments finds a shorter route across a loop, leaving the abandoned arc behind. The same step that updates the channel produces the topology change.Houdini · Simulation · Geomorphologyread →FlowerAn end-to-end procedural flower in Houdini: petal geometry, stem articulation, and surfacing all driven by parameters. The same network produces a family of variations from a single rig.Houdini · Procedural modelingread →