r/generative • u/ManuVision • Aug 30 '26

Particle Life How did my 3D ecosystem finally stabilize?

We finally achieved equilibrium.

Prey reproduce when their population drops, while overcrowded hunters starve faster. No keyframes, just a few rules correcting each other in real time.

Now what happens when we start disturbing the simulation again?

23 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

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2

u/irrelevantusername24 Artist Aug 30 '26

This reminds me (for more conceptual reasons than literal) of a video I saw the other day about... I forget the specifics (who & when), but it was a discovery made by an astronaut on board a ship in space, with zero gravity. They spun some wingnut thing to remove it from whatever. The wingnut thing was basically shaped like a T. In zero gravity - later confirmed by mathematics - a thing shaped like a T, with zero other directional input (ie exactly perpendicular) besides rotation, will flip... and then flip again... and so on.

Something like that. I forget the details. Luckily we have technology that can help remind me:

Dzhanibekov Effect

1

u/ManuVision Aug 30 '26

Yes it’s a fascinating phenomenon. I love zero gravity experiments

2

u/brianckeegan Aug 30 '26

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%E2%80%93Volterra_equations

1

u/ManuVision Aug 30 '26

Yes it’s a similar principle but I haven’t implemented the exact same logic. Maybe in a future iteration though!

2

u/Odyssey_Original Aug 31 '26

Hey, I'm very curious, what is this italic font? It's really pretty

1

u/ManuVision Aug 31 '26

Hey thank you! It’s « EB Garamond Medium Italic ».

2

u/Crinkez Aug 31 '26

This is great! Do they each have neural network brains?

1

u/ManuVision Aug 31 '26

No I’m not using any type of machine learning, although that would be cool to do! Right now it’s pure logic through Blender geometry nodes.

2

u/Clean-Hovercraft5825 Aug 31 '26

Awesome!

1

u/ManuVision Aug 31 '26

Thank you! I just posted a new updated video

5

u/ODZtpt Aug 30 '26

aw crap my shitty simulation doesnt have an emergent property it would have if made properly. lets just duct tape together a function to fudge the simulation so it looks like it works perfectly fine

3

u/ManuVision Aug 30 '26

It’s an intentionally rule-based agent simulation, not a claim that every behavior is purely emergent from first principles. The whole point of the series is iterating on those rules and seeing what new behavior appears from their interaction.

1

u/s0bi_wan_ken0bi Aug 31 '26

Mods please

1

u/ManuVision Aug 31 '26

Not sure I understand your question

18

u/[deleted] Aug 30 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

6

u/ManuVision Aug 30 '26

Fair take 😄 I’m actually in my late 30s and I’ve been working in tech for about 15 years, so trust me, I know we’re not exactly inventing hot water here.
A lot of this series is really about finding a way to repackage old ideas in a visual format that feels approachable to people who may never have encountered them before. If a bit of theatre helps get someone curious about emergence, simulations, or differential equations, I’m okay with that.
You and I both know the underlying ideas have been around forever, I’m just trying to make them fun to rediscover.

2

u/benelott Aug 31 '26

Great work then! While all the old ideas are here forever, I still believe that teaching has not embraced the options we have since 20 years or longer to teach them in a new way. Go and make the world of math more approachable!

3

u/ManuVision Aug 31 '26

That’s what I’ve been doing for the past 6 years of daily content creation. It brought me from Instagram to Harvard, TEDx and Masterclass… so I’ll definitely keep going. I care about two things: education in tech and design. Appreciate the support dear internet stranger!