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I have been messing around off and on trying to create a 3d cellular automata  model in Maya using expressions. It is fairly difficult to create an agent based or object-oriented system using expressions because once you drive an attribute from within an expression it cannot receive any other inputs (unless I am missing something or there is a utility node that allows this). So it was a little harder than doing something like this in Flash. The only delta from the outside is time, which is controlled by the timeline. I also had a problem with the names of the cells and the child check. The end result only gives birth to a cell in every other space. This creates a sort of 3d checkerboard effect. I tried to sort this out, but gave up for now. I don’t think it looks, bad its just that you have all of the useless cells. You can download the cell file below and an updated duplicate script that allows you to create a 3d grid of the cell. Make sure you set all of the cells Timer  attribute to -4 and then go to frame 1 on the timeslider. Choose a cell and set Timer to 0 (this will be the original) and playback the animation. It works best with over 6 cells in each direction, but it can get heavy with over 20.

Download source: cell.mb + duplicate3d.mel

We helped out our friends, EFGH, with their website. The site has a background of “pixels” that cycles through randomly generated colors. Also, if you are in NYC, you should grab a gourmet  sausage at one of their recently completed project, Dogmatic on 17th street between Union Sq. and 5th Ave.

Check out the source below for a simple version of the background.

Download source: color_ch.fla

Check out the *.swf

This arrived at the studio a couple of weeks ago… still trying to figure out what it does. We’ve been cooking hot dogs with it, but we have a feeling it can be used for some pretty tricky stuff. Hopefully, once we figure out where it came from and how to aim it, the posts around here will get a little more physical!