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.
A 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.
An 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.
A simulation of how rivers evolve over time — channels meander, cut off, and reconnect through erosion and sediment transport. The model captures qualitative behavior over physical accuracy. The same dynamics — channel migration, floodplain reshaping, habitat continuity — apply directly to site analysis and ecological design.
Ongoing 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.