Phototropism

Like plants reaching up through the undergrowth towards sunlight, Phototropism simulates flora growing through the canvas towards sources of light.

Three main components decide the composition of each output: light spawners, obstacles, and floras.

Light spawners spawn light particles, which trace their path through the canvas as they move. They bounce off of larger obstacles and refract through smaller ones. Various floras spawn around the canvas, and when a photon collides with a flora, new growth is created at the place of contact. In short, floras eat photons and grow. Since they can only grow where they sense light, they naturally path around the obstacles, reaching towards the light spawners. As they grow, they paint themselves in gradients, sometimes smooth and sometimes jagged, mimicking variegation. Strokes are drawn on top, tracing the underlying structure of the growth like veins on a leaf.

Each color palette in this project was created by sampling pictures I took of plants, bugs, spiders, and salamanders.

These artworks are best viewed live, where you can watch the lifeforms grow into place on the screen. Static preview images show a snapshot of the simulation, and the artwork may continue to evolve further in live view. To get a better sense of how this all works, try toggling on and off the various layers of the artwork:

'1' - Toggle light traces

'2' - Toggle main growth structure

'3' - Toggle growth paint

'4' - Toggle growth lines

Other controls:

'p' - pause/play simulation

's' - save current state as png

Phototropism is resource intensive, and may run slowly on older devices. By default, the script will automatically adjust its render speed to meet a consistent and reasonable framerate, rendering in the fastest time possible. To set a custom speed, you can append '&speed=n' (where n is any integer) to the url.