PovRay Organic Structures

I had the idea a while ago to use the Conway's Life algorithm as a cheap way of generating some interesting looking 3D structures.

Conway's Game of Life is usually played out on a two dimensional grid upon which gliders, puffers and all manner of weird and wonderful "organisms" burst spotaneously into life and wriggle in strange attractive ways.

If you draw each successive generation at increasing altitudes, though, effectively mapping time to the third dimension, some interesting structures result.

By using some of Povray's party tricks, like blobs and layered textures, I can generate all kinds of weird and wonderful structures from alien landscapes to fields of cacti.

The blobs hide a lot of what is going on there and, looking at that image, it is impossible to see the link with Conway's Life at all, so here is exactly the same structure with more traditional boxes and much simpler texturing.  The lighting sucks.  Sorry.

With more appropriate textures, there are some cool sci-fi cityscapes to be found.

Early days, but encouraging stuff.