Regeneration

[wayneg]

I'd like to play around with a concept, where one would place a tree on the terrain.

The tree would spawn a new smaller tree away from the first, after considering some rules.

Kinda like Conway's version of life but using Leadwerks and trees, or other models.

 

Be interesting to see the trees to grow, live and die. I'd also want to cap the population so it doesnt get out of control.

What ideas can you suggest to do this experiment ?

[Pixel Perfect]

The logic should be quite simple but making your trees look like they are growing realistically is the tricky part.

 

If you could procedurally generate your tree trunks, branches and foliage then that would produce the best approximation, using maybe a fractal type algorithm. Conversely you could substitute in a series of pre sized models over time or simply scale a small model over time (wouldn't look very realistic).

 

A different approach would be forget the models all together and use a billboard with a video of a tree growing and eventually dying (if you can find or make such a thing), these could be spawned easily and simply run through their life cycle.

 

Not really sure how detailed and realistic you want this to be.

[Rick]

You could use animated trees and just animate them very very slowly.

[wayneg]

I guess the first part of my question is do I just use loadmodel in LUA script to load a new instance, and will that instance run the lua attached to it ?

[Rick]

Yes. At least that's what I do and the scripts attached do run.