Panspermia (1990)

Panspermia is the name for the theory that life exists and is distributed throughout the universe in the form of germs or spores. This short computer animation places the viewer in the middle of a virtual world of an aggressively reproducing inter-galactic life form, and depicts a single life cycle of this unusual self propagating system.

Original software was used to create and animate forests of 3D plant structures. "Artificial evolution" techniques were used to interactively select from random mutations of plant shapes until a variety of interesting structures emerged. The subject matter of the piece suggests the underlying biological methods that were used to efficiently create an unusual level of complexity. Dynamic simulations and particle systems were also employed to achieve motions that are calculated automatically.

Attempts were made to bring together several concepts: chaos, complexity, evolution, self propagating entities, and the nature of life itself.

This item is part of the collection: SIGGRAPH at www.archive.org

Director: Karl Sims
Audio/Visual: sound, color
Keywords: animation; computer graphics; evolution; plant simulation; galaxy; planet
Contact Information: For further technical information see: "Artificial Evolution for Computer Graphics" K.Sims, Computer Graphics (Siggraph '91 proceedings), July 1991, pp.319-328. and "Particle Animation and Rendering Using Data Parallel Computation" K.Sims, Computer Graphics (Siggraph '90 proceedings), Aug. 1990, pp.405-413. For information on other works by Karl Sims visit: http://www.genarts.com/karl/

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Panspermia
• animation
• computer
• graphics
• evolution
• plant
• simulation
• galaxy
• planet

[metal666micky]

This film was included in one of the early 'Minds Eye' videos. I remember seeing it in 1991. The video and work such as this, was quite literally the inspiration for me to make a career out of 3d animation.

I am still in the industry and loving it just as much as the day I saw this.

Amazing work even to this day in many regards.

[TheObservationDeck]

Science fiction is funny...

[loprosh]

Still really epic !!

[Pyritie]

yes because plants will really shoot seeds out of the atmosphere :o

[marginallymental]

so THAT'S where they got the idea for Viva Pinata!

[xFENRISx]

That's way simplistic. The only way for panspermia to work is if an external entity contained cells or pre-biotic organic chemistry to give rise to eukarotes such as plants and animals. The idea that some comet spawned plants is ridiculous. Eukarotes need bacteria to survive.

[BNDS9]

cool:):)