L-System Node


Some time ago I became excited by the potential of the Lindenmayer rewriting system for pattern generation in nodeEditor.
The wikipedia page offers a decent explanation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-system

Initially I was thinking of a pair of nodes: a) universal rewriter & b) a interpreter/turtle node. This is the common approach and the one that Grasshopper has taken. However, I realised that the lack of facility for handling string data would render this method impractical, and so shelved the idea.

That was until today when I discovered this website:
https://onlinemathtools.com/l-system-generator

The images above are all examples of patterns generated with this online tool, and could potentially be generated in NE with parametric control.

The page is rich in javascript, including one linked files called "l-system-generator.js" which I wonder if it may present a template for
the authoring of a NE node following a similar approach. Many of the options on the webpage would not be needed in the node.

Link for javascript file:
https://onlinemathtools.com/js/bridges/l-system-generator.js?v=2dcf9b

Below I have shown a proposal for a L-System Node. It need only have inputs for the Starting point, the number of generations, the line length for branches, the branch angle and scaling factor of line length of branches of each generation. For the 6 patterns shown above the "Scale/Gen" value would be 1, but botanical structure such shown below would have a decimal value < 1 (eg 0.3).

All of the grammatical formulation would be located in the info panel. I have included outputs as lines and as well as points because each has advantages.

I know that this would likely be a major undertaking, but if there are any biters, I do believe it was be an amazing contribution to NE.

Have a great weekend,
James
https://www.instagram.com/nodeology/



PS this page may also be of interest:
https://jsxgraph.org/wiki/index.php/JavaScript_code_for_producing_Lindenmayer_systems