An interactive crystal growth expression method using cellular automata

Abstract

There are many crystal growth expressions in interactive contents. However, crystal growth in interactive content is often due to simple deformation of polygons, and detailed growth expressions using simulations are rarely seen. In this study, we developed a method for expressing crystal growth by simulation for application to interactive contents. A three-dimensional lattice point group is created based on the crystal structure of quartz, and each lattice point is defined as a crystal or a solution. The shape change of crystal growth was simulated by updating the state of lattice points using the cellular automaton method. Then, based on the state of the lattice points, a polygon of crystal shape was created using the marching cube method. We performed these processes on a GPU and aimed to express the growth at an interactive speed.