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This project explores the generation of shell-like forms through a combination of simple mathematical growth rules and procedural geometry.
The work began following a visit to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and an observation that many shell forms appear to emerge from variations on a surprisingly small set of underlying geometric principles:
Mollusc shells illustrate beautifully how diversity can arise from just a few variations on one simple mathematical model, encoded in the genes.
The project investigates that idea through a series of computational experiments. Starting from a common growth framework, a range of shell forms can be generated by varying parameters governing growth, coiling, aperture geometry, ornamentation and internal shell structure.
Although highly simplified, the resulting models reproduce many features associated with real molluscan and cephalopod shells, including chambered nautilus-like forms, ammonite-inspired shells and high-spired gastropod morphologies.
The emphasis is not on producing biologically exact simulations. Instead, the project explores how complex and recognisably natural forms can emerge from the interaction of relatively simple developmental rules.
In this sense, the models can be viewed as small experiments in computational natural history. They sit somewhere between mathematical visualisation, procedural modelling and developmental morphology, using code as a tool for investigating the relationship between growth process and biological form.
Further documentation, including the mathematical growth model, shell construction methods, example morphologies and modelling observations, is available in the Wiki.
The project currently supports:
- Logarithmic shell growth
- Ribbed shell surfaces
- Pigmentation bands
- Aperture lip flare
- Curved chamber septa
- Transparent shell rendering
- Shell wall thickness
- Siphuncle generation
- Parameter presets for different shell forms
- Animated shell growth
Future directions may include:
- Involute versus evolute coiling
Inspired by the mathematics of logarithmic shell growth and the broader traditions of theoretical morphology and computational natural history, including the work of D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson and David Raup.
All code and implementations in this repository are original to this project.
For the historical and theoretical background, please see BACKGROUND.md
To file issues or suggestions, please use the Issues page for this project on GitHub.
This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details