This is amazing. Now I'm imagining the ability to simulate less-than-ideal conditions for tree growth. Placing the tree next to a building or on a hill or culling branches at certain stages in its life to see what happens next, etc.
I think my overall thought is: we see plenty of nice looking trees in games and graphics. What about authentically degenerate trees?
Now I want a simulated caterpillar. In my area, we sometimes get caterpillar apocalypse where the whole forest will be full of them, sometimes they cover entire trees with their silk.
I think the most interesting result would be somewhere halfway between 0 and 100% nibbled.
Don't stop there: fungi and beetles are some other stressors that could be modeled alongside caterpillars using similar techniques. Like lepidopterans, they are very host-specific, though they have somewhat different transmission vectors, so you could see the defoliation (or other foliage impacts like leaf curling and yellowing) spread / not spread depending on factors such as proximity, moisture, wind and the parasite's lifecycle.
Pretty cool idea: "buds compete for light, the tree distributes a growth resource among them, and the successful ones produce new shoots. Those shoots change the light available for the next round. The crown shape emerges from this feedback loop."
I would never have thought to generate tree shapes by simulating real life
There has been a complete deluge of new accounts sometimes only hours or days old being extremely condescending, overly negative, sometimes antagonistic, and sometimes they seem like a kind of LLM prompted to cause arguments.
The generated trees look absolutely amazing. Adjusting the process for different lighting situations seems straightforward too - freestanding trees look different from those in woods.
All their growth models do involve light, however. So it probably does make sense to have a common light representation - ideally some sort of sparse cone storage though, not a voxel grid the size of a forest.
I think my overall thought is: we see plenty of nice looking trees in games and graphics. What about authentically degenerate trees?
I think the most interesting result would be somewhere halfway between 0 and 100% nibbled.
I would never have thought to generate tree shapes by simulating real life