Tetrahedron Growth

[tanx]

I'm sort of new to Houdini and coding and am in a bit of trouble with an animation I'm trying to develop and would love to do it in vex

 

Basically the idea is a triangle births a tetrahedron by creating a random point on the surface moving it one variable length away from the surface. then a random side of the tetrahedron and another point is added to the surface which then moves in the same variable length away from that surface. The process repeats like a virus growing. 

 

Some of things I'm taking into consideration is:

 

1. how is a vector direction chosen that is not inside the geometry but outwards from the facet chosen

2. how to propagate the geometry variably with not just one side chosen every time the next tetrahedron is completed

3. how to stop the animation variably 

 

I'm very new to vex and haven't really given coding any though since college which was 20 years ago.

 

I attached a test animation that i hand animated.

preview2.mp4

[konstantin magnus]

I just did a similar thing without VEX. Maybe it helps you anticipate even more problems.

tri_peak.hipnc

[tanx]

This is a great rig!

Its just expanding out of every side instead of a random side but definitely a cool ref project to take into account. 

 

Thanks konstantin!

 

A

[tanx]

messed around with your file last night... came up with this. Not there but kinda cool

TetraGrowthTest.hip

[konstantin magnus]

Cool, kind of unexpected!