When looking out on the world, there is no shortage of beauty. Nature is the greatest artist, and the physical world is her medium. This said, the glimpses we gain into her artistic process are few and far between. Some approach the question through biology, physics, or chemistry, but the avenue I chose for this project was that of mathematics. It was through mathematics that I sought to answer one question:
What defines the ways in which plants and trees grow?
No matter where I went, I found myself looking up, fascinated by the branching patterns of the various species of trees that littered my community.
After some research, my journey truly began when I came into posession of a physical copy of The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants. It was here that the concepts I had been researching were fully expounded upon.
Applying a synthesis of the various techniques found in the book, I created the first version of Eden in early 2017 at PennApps VX, where my solo project scored Top 30 among over 500 teams, fighting for over $80,000 in prizes. I later returned to the project in 2019 to improve it aesthetically and update the mathematics used to generate the trees.
The project itself can be viewed live online here, and serves to generate realistic yet random tree structures.