Differential Growth Sculptures

Computational Fabrication | Blender Geometry Nodes, 3D Printing | 2024 |

Differential growth simulation generating organic forms that wrap around rigid glass primitives through force-based vertex manipulation—no boolean operations or manual modeling. Forms shaped entirely by virtual forces: normal direction growth scaled by curvature, 4D Perlin noise variation, gravity thresholds, and attractor points, with raycast collision detection.

Implementation

Built in Blender Geometry Nodes, running iteratively on mesh vertices. System remeshes geometry each frame into consistent voxel volumes, dynamically inserting new points as forms expand. Vertices adjacent to collisions accelerate tangentially, causing rapid envelopment of objects with internal attractors. All parameters (voxel size, force multipliers, noise characteristics) exposed for real-time exploration of growth behaviors—from coral-like branching to smooth wrapping.

Force system combines normal direction growth with curvature acceleration along ridges, 4D Perlin noise for variation and new branch formation, and attractor points masked by normal direction to prevent force cancellation. Raycasts fire from each vertex along normals—detected collisions halt growth while adjacent vertices receive tangential growth vectors.

Outputs & Fabrication

Three sculptures exploring different parameter configurations: Dual Prisms (high curvature/noise with dual attractors creating aggressive branching), Cube (lower curvature with larger voxels producing smoother wrapping), Coral (maximum noise with disabled attractors for organic branching). Cube received secondary voronoi post-processing pass—high-res remesh with texture-based vertex deletion and face extrusion creating cellular shell structure.

Printed in matte white PLA, fitted around glass primitives. Dual Prisms split into two parts with boolean joint for printability. Detailed coral structures required careful support parameter tuning.