Decoding Nature

Decoding Nature - Simulating nature with code

This class is taught by Professor Aaron Sherwood.

Which Folders are What?

The Exercises/ folder contains exercises that I did in class.

Folders with the A## prefix are assignments done throughout the semester.

What are the Assignments about?

Assignment 1 - Predator

Pete (the circle) exists in a world of two zones. A Predator (the triangle) also lives in the same world, and constantly wants to get at Pete and destroy him. Pete is a little dumb and runs around all over the place randomly, implementing a Perlin noise walk. Meanwhile, the Predator is attracted (in terms of force, not in terms of love) to Pete and is constantly accelerating toward him. However, the Predator goes a bit crazier when in the red zone, and a bit milder when in the green zone.

Pete becomes bigger each time he is poked by the Predator. If he gets too big, he will explode and die.

Assignment 2 - Magnet

This assignment is meant to explore different types of forces. It simulates a magnetic force. Since magnetic force is actually 3D, I had to transfer it somehow to 2D. I decided to make the magnetic field a scalar value instead of a vector, allowing the final force that is calculated to be a 2D vector.

I've also simulated water using sin equations. There's a circle at the bottom of the water which attracts the other smaller circles moving around randomly (with Perlin noise) in the water. Once these random smaller circles enter the semicircle, which is the force-zone, then they will be pulled in to the circle at the bottom.

Assignment 3 - Sound of Roses

Since this assignment should involve oscillation, I decided to draw patterns based on polar roses, as shown in this Wikipedia article. The pattern of the roses depends on k, where k = n/d. I have chosen some values of n and d that makes satisfying patterns.

Next, I draw a hidden grid of rectangles in the background, so that as my mover moves around and draws the roses, it will trigger sounds with varying pitch based on the y value of the rectangle. In order to balance the rate at which the patterns are drawn and the rate at which the sounds are triggered, I've designed the grid so that the notes will only be triggered if the mover moves close enough to the center of the rectangles.

Assignment 4 - Maze

For this assignment, I designed a maze whose obstacles are actually particle systems. The reason for doing so is that these particles will only show one the mover moves close enough to them. This means that the mover will have limited visibility as it moves through the maze.

Using the UP and DOWN arrow keys, you can increase or decrease the visibility respectively.

The goal of the game is simple: get to the other side, where there will be a thin strip of area that has a different color. As you succeed each time, the game will become increasingly hard.

Good luck!

Assignment 5 (Midterm) - Solar System

For my midterm project, I created a simple simulation of the solar system. This is done in 3D, which was quite a challenge, as I wished to make as many elements in scale as possible. Since making everything in scale was impossible if I want to fit all the planets on the canvas and make them visible, I resorted to maintaining only the scale of the individual features/elements of the planets within themselves, i.e. the masses of the planets are in scale in respect to each other, but the masses are not in scale to their diameters or their distances from the Sun.

Notes:

• The planets have different densities, so their mass and diameters do not always correlate 1:1.
  • The mass is used to calculate gravitational attraction
  • The diameter is used to display the planets
• Since the Sun's size is far too big compared to the planets, it is not in scale. However, the planets' sizes are.

Sources:

• General planetary data:
  • https://www.windows2universe.org/our_solar_system/planets_orbits_table.html
  • https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/docs/modelingsolarsystem_20070112.pdf
• Orbital Inclination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_inclination
• Conversion from polar to 3D coordinates:
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_coordinate_system
  • http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/Classes/CalcIII/SphericalCoords.aspx

Assignment 6 - Pitch Follower

For this assignment, I simply followed Shiffman's implementation of a flock, and tried to extend it by controlling the flock with sound. More specifically, the frequency and amplitude of the sound controls the x and y coordinates, respectively. The x coordinate corresponds to the frequency, while the y coordinate is inversely related to the amplitude, so that the higher the volume, the higher the flock will go (mapping to a lower y value).

Assignment 7 - Historical Cellular Automata

I only implemented simple tweaks in this assignment, where I take Shiffman's implementation of the classic CA, and changed the cells so that they keep a record of their states. More specifically, I change the color of the cell according to how often it has been alive up until the present moment. The color is mapped on a grayscale according to the ratio: (# of generations cell has been alive) / (total # of generations).

Assignment 8 - Sea World

For this assignment, I took Shiffman's implementation of the tree, and combined it with some elements from Assignment 2 - namely the water and the randomly moving "fish". I simply tweaked around the the L-system to implement a different set of rules so that the trees would look a bit more like seaweed, and then added the rest of the elements to that, to create a miniature sea world.

Assignment 9 (Final Project) - Maze 3D

This assignment is part of our class final project, where the whole class would collaborate to create a world. For my portion, I want to try implementing a 3D version of Assignment 4.